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THE 



MAKING OF ENGLISH 



BY 

HENRY BRADLEY 
Hon. M.A. Oxon., Hon. Ph.D. Heidelberg 

SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1904 

All rights reserved 



TEM? r 




•3f 


LIBRARY o» CONGRESS 




Tw« Copies Received 




MAR 8 1904 




CLASS 0. XXc. No. 

copy si 








Copyright, 1904, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up, elcctrotyped, and published March, 1904. 



Ncrtoooto $re«a 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



\3 



; y? 



PREFACE. 



This little work was announced as in preparation 
some years ago, but illness compelled me to lay 
it aside when only a few pages* had, been written, 
and since then my health has seldom permitted 
me to attempt any work in addition to my daily 
task as one of the editors of the Oxford English 
Dictionary. Some of the faults of this volume 
may be due to the desultory manner in which it 
has been composed ; but, on the other hand, the 
length of time that has elapsed since it was first 
planned has given me opportunity for more care- 
ful consideration of difficult points. 

The object of the book is to give to educated 
readers unversed in philology some notion of the 
causes that have produced the excellences and 
defects of modern English as an instrument of 
expression. With the history of the language I 
have attempted to deal only so far as it bears 
on this special problem. The subject, even as 
thus restricted, is one which it is not easy to 



vi PREFACE 

treat briefly. I have, however, resisted the temp- 
tation to enlarge the volume beyond the limits 
originally intended, because I believe that for 
the purpose which I have in view a small book 
is more likely to be useful than a large one. 

My thanks are due to my friends Professor 
Napier, Mr. W. A. Craigie, and Mr. C. T. Onions, 
for their kindness in reading the proofs, and sug- 
gesting valuable corrections and improvements. 

HENRY BRADLEY. 

Oxford, January 1904. 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY ------- i 

§ i. The Likeness of German and English - i 
§ 2. Differences between German and 

English ------ 4 

§ 3. Characteristics of Old English 7 

§ 4. Object of this Book - - - - - 14 

CHAPTER II. 

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR - 16 

§ 1. Simplification of Accidence - - 17 

§ 2. New Grammatical Material 53 

§ 3. Profit and Loss 74 

CHAPTER III. 

WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN 

TONGUES 80 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV. 

PAGE 

WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH - - - - in 

§ i. Composition in 

§ 2. Derivation 128 

§ 3. Root-Creation 154 

CHAPTER V. 

CHANGES OF MEANING 160 

CHAPTER VI. 

SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH - 215 

INDEX 241 



THE MAKING OF ENGLISH 



CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 

§ 1. The Likeness of German and English. 

An Englishman who begins to learn German 
cannot fail to be struck by the resemblance which 
that language presents to his native tongue. Of 
the words which occur in his first lessons because 
they are those most commonly used in everyday 
conversation, a very large proportion are recog- 
nisably identical, in spite of considerable differences 
of pronunciation, with their English synonyms. 
The following examples will suffice to illustrate 
the remarkable degree of similarity between the 
vocabularies of the two languages : Vater father, 
Mutter mother, Bruder brother, Schwester sister, 
Hans house, Feld field, Gras grass, Korn corn, 
Land land, Stein stone, Kuh cow, Kalb calf, Ochse 
ox, singen to sing, horen to hear, haben to have, 
gehen to go, brechen to break, bringen to bring, 



2 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

gut good, wohl well, grun green, hart hard, blind 
blind, ich I, wir we, selbst self, ^z>r here, ««^r 
under, bei by, zw be-fore. At a very early stage 
of his progress, the learner will find himself able 
to compile a list of some hundreds of German 
words which have an obvious likeness to the 
English words with which they agree in meaning. 
In addition to these resemblances which lie on 
the surface, there are many others which can 
only be perceived by the help of a knowledge of 
the general laws of correspondence between 
German and English sounds. A few of these 
general laws may be mentioned by way of illus- 
tration. An English t is usually represented in 
German by z, tz, or ss; an English th by d\ an 
English / by pf or /; an English d by /; and 
an English v in the middle of a word by b. 
There are similar laws, too complicated to 
be stated here, relating to the correspondence 
of the vowels. By the study of these laws and 
of the facts that are known about the history of 
the two languages, scholars have been enabled 
to prove the fundamental identity of a vast 
number of English words with German words 
which are very different from them in sound 
and spelling, and often also in meaning. Thus, 
for example, Baum, a tree, is the same word 



I.] INTRODUCTORY 3 

as the English ' beam ' ; Zaun, a hedge, is our 

I town ' (which originally meant a place surrounded 
by a hedge, a farm enclosure); Zeit, time, is 
our ' tide ' ; drehen, to turn, wind, is our ' throw,' 
and the derivative Draht, wire, is our ' thread ' ; 
tragen, to carry, is our ' draw ' ; and so on. 

But it is not merely in their stock of words 
that English and German have a great deal in 
common. In their grammar, also, they resemble 
each other to a very remarkable extent. Our 
way of forming the genitive by adding s is 
paralleled in many German words : ' the king's 
house' is in German ' des Konig^ Haus.' 
The syllables -er and -est are used in both 
languages to form the comparatives and super- 
latives of adjectives. In the conjugation of the 
verbs the similarity is equally striking. ' I hear,' 

I I heard,' ' I have heard ' are in German ich hore, 
ich korte, ich habe gehort; ' I see,' ' I saw,' ' I have 
seen ' are ich sehe, ich sah } ich habe gesehen ; ' I 
sing,' ' I sang,' ' I have sung ' are ich singe \ ich 
sang, ich habe gesungen ; ' I bring,' ' I brought,' ' I 
have brought' are ich bringe, ich brachte, ich 
habe gebracht. Our ' thou singest ' is in German 
du singst. 

The explanation of these facts is not that 
English is derived from German or German 



4 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

from English, but that both have descended, 
with gradual divergent changes, from a pre- 
historic language which scholars have called 
Primitive Germanic or Primitive Teutonic. Low 
German or Plattdeutsch, the dialect spoken 
(now only by the common people) in ' Low ' or 
Northern Germany, is much more like English 
than literary High German is ; and Dutch and 
Frisian resemble Low German. The Scandinavian 
languages, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Ice- 
landic, are also of Germanic (or Teutonic) origin ; 
and so is Gothic, a dead language known to us 
chiefly from a translation of portions of the Bible 
made in the fourth century. 



§ 2. Differences between German and English. 

But while modern English and modern 
German have so many conspicuous traces of 
their original kinship, the points of contrast 
between the two languages are equally striking 
and significant. 

In the first place, the grammar, or rather the 
accidence, of German is enormously more com- 
plicated than that of English. The German 
noun has three genders, which in many instances 
have no relation to the sex of the object sig- 



I.] INTRODUCTORY 5 

nified, or to the meaning or form of the word. 
Kopf, head, is masculine, though the synonymous 
Haupt is neuter ; Hand is feminine, but Fusz, 
foot, is masculine, and Bein, leg, is neuter ; Weib, 
woman, and Madchen, girl, are neuter. The 
foreign student of English has no such diffi- 
culties to encounter. Properly speaking, we 
have no ' genders ' at all : we say ' he/ ' she,' 
or 'it' according to the sex, or absence of 
sex, of the object to which we refer. English 
nouns have only one case-ending, the s of 
the genitive ; and practically only one mode 
of forming the plural, as the few exceptions 
can be learned in half-an-hour. German nouns 
have four cases, and are divided into several 
declensions each with its own set of inflexions 
for case and number. The English adjective 
is not inflected at all; the one form good cor- 
responds to the six German forms gut, guter, 
gute, gutes, gutem, guten, the choice of which 
depends partly on the gender, number, and 
case of the noun which is qualified, and partly 
on other grammatical relations. In conjugating 
an English verb, such as sing, we meet with 
only eight distinct forms, sing, singest, sings, 
singeth, sang, sangest, singing, sung', and even 
of these, three are practically obsolete. In the 



6 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

conjugation of the German verb singen the 
number of distinct forms is sixteen. 

In addition to these differences in the gram- 
matical systems of the two languages, there are 
others no less noteworthy which relate to the 
character of their vocabulary. 

We have already pointed out that of the 
English words which occur in familiar conver- 
sation, the great majority are found to exist 
also in German, with certain regular variations 
of form due to the difference in the sound- 
systems of the two languages. If, however, 
instead of confining our attention to that part 
of the language that serves the needs of 
everyday life, we were to examine the whole 
English vocabulary as it is exhibited in a 
dictionary, we should find that by far the 
greater number of the words have no formal 
equivalents in German, being for the most 
part derived from foreign languages, chiefly 
French, Latin, and Greek. It is true that 
many of these non-Germanic words are very 
rarely used ; still, if we take at random a page 
from an English book which treats of history, 
politics, philosophy, or literary criticism, the 
majority of the nouns, adjectives, and verbs are 
usually of foreign etymology. An ordinary 



I.] INTRODUCTORY 7 

page of German, on the other hand, contains 
very few words that are not derived from 
native roots. German, in fact, is, comparatively 
speaking, an unmixed language; modern Eng- 
lish, so far as its vocabulary is concerned, is a 
mixed language, in which the native Germanic 
elements are outnumbered by those derived from 
foreign tongues. 

§ 3. Characteristics of Old English. 

The differences between German and English, 
so far as they have been described above} are 
entirely due to the gradual changes that have 
taken place in English during the last thousand 
years. The ancient form of our language — the 
kind of English that was written by King 
Alfred in the ninth century — had every one of 
those general characteristics which we have 
mentioned as distinguishing modern German 
from modern English. 

Before proceeding to the illustration of this 
statement, let us briefly explain the meaning of 
certain terms which we shall have to use. By 

1 This limitation is very important. It must not be imagined 
that German has not altered greatly during the last thousand years, 
or that English and German did not already differ widely from 
each other a thousand years ago. 



8 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

' Old English ' we mean the language (by some 
persons called ' Anglo-Saxon ') spoken by Eng- 
lishmen down to about 1150; * Middle English' 
is the language spoken between about n 50 and 
about 1500; and 'Modern English' means the 
English of the last four centuries. The reader 
must not, however, suppose, as young learners 
sometimes do, that in 11 50 or in 1500 one kind 
of English was superseded by another. The 
English language has been undergoing constant 
change ever since it was a language, and it is 
changing still. For purposes of study it has 
been found useful to divide its history into three 
periods ; and if this is done at all, it is necessary 
to specify some approximate dates as the points 
of division. The dates 11 50 and 1500 have 
been chosen because the one is the middle and 
the other the end of a century of the common 
reckoning ; and they are also convenient, because 
about those years the process of change was 
going on somewhat more rapidly than usual, so 
that if we compare a book written a quarter of 
a century before the end of a period with one 
written a quarter of a century after it, we can 
see clearly that the language has entered on a 
new stage of development. 

In considering the characteristics of Old 



I.] INTRODUCTORY 9 

English, we will refer especially to the southern 
dialect as it was written by King Alfred just 
before 900. In the first place, Alfred's English 
had all the grammatical complexity which exists 
in Modern German, and indeed a little more. 
It had the same irrational system of genders : 
hand was feminine, fdt (foot) was masculine, 
while mcegden (maiden) and wif (wife, woman) 
were neuter. The Old English nouns had five 
cases, and the system of declensions was intri- 
cate to a degree which Modern German does 
not nearly rival. Some nouns made their geni- 
tive singular in -es, others in -e, others in -a, 
and others in -an ; and in a few nouns the 
genitive had the same form as the nominative. 
The endings which marked the nominative 
plural were -as, -a, -u, -e, -an; moreover, many 
plural nominatives coincided in form with the 
singular, and others were formed (like our modern 
teeth and mice) by change of vowel. The adjec- 
tives had an elaborate set of inflexions, which 
have now utterly disappeared, so that the soli- 
tary Modern English form glad represents eleven 
distinct forms in Old English : glced, glcedre, 
glcedne, glcedra, gladu, glades, gladum, glade, 
gladena, glada, gladan. In the conjugation of 
the verbs there were twice as many different 



io THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

forms as there are in Modern English. The 
persons of the plural, for instance, differed in 
form from those of the singular: where we now 
say ' I sing, we sing, I sang, we sang,' the Old 
English forms were, 'ic singe, we singath, ic 
sang, we sungon.' The subjunctive mood, of 
which there are only a few traces left in Modern 
English, occupied as prominent a place in 
Old English grammar as it does in Modern 
German. 

Further, Old English differed from Modern 
English in being — like Modern German, but in 
a greater degree — comparatively free from words 
of foreign origin. It had, indeed, incorporated a 
certain number of Latin words, chiefly relating 
either to the institutions and ritual of the Church, 
or to things connected with Roman civilisation. 
But these formed only a very small proportion 
of the entire vocabulary. Even for the technical 
terms of Christian theology, the Old English 
writers preferred, instead of adopting the Latin 
words that lay ready to their hand, to invent 
new equivalents, formed from native words by 
composition and derivation. 

After what has been said, the reader will not 
be surprised to be told that a page, even of Old 
English prose, not to speak of the poetry, has 



'.] 



INTRODUCTORY 



quite the aspect of a foreign language. The 
following specimen is taken from a sermon by 
JEliric, who died about a.d. 1025 : 



Tha the ne gelyfath thurh 
agenne eyre hi scoriath, na 
thurh gewyrd ; for-than-the 
gewyrd nis nan thing buton 
leas wena : ne nan thing 
sothllce be gewyrde ne 
gewyrth, ac ealle thing thurh 
Godes d5m beoth geende- 
byrde, se the cwaeth thurh 
his wltegan, ' Ic afandige 
manna heortan, and heora 
lendena, and ielcum sylle 
aefter his faerelde, and aefter 
his agenre afundennysse.' 
Ne talige nan man his yfelan 
daeda to Gode, ac talige arrest 
to tham deofle, the mancyn 
beswac, and to Adames 
forgsegednysse ; ac theah 
swithost to him sylfum, thaet 
him yfel gelicath, and ne 
Heath god. 

It is impossible here to give any complete 
rules for Old English pronunciation; but some 
approximate notion of the sounds of the language 
may be obtained by reading the above passage 
according to the following directions. Pronounce 
y and y like the German ii or the French u 
(short and long), <z like a in * hat,' ^ like e in 



They who do not believe 
refuse through their own 
choice, not through fate, 
because fate is nothing but a 
false notion ; nor does any- 
thing truly come to pass by 
fate, but all things are 
ordered by the judgment of 
God, who said by his pro- 
phet, ' I try the hearts of 
men, and their reins, and 
give to every one according 
to his conduct, and accord- 
ing to his own device/ Let 
no man impute his evil deeds 
to God, but let him impute 
them first to the devil, who 
deceived mankind, and to 
Adam's transgression ; but 
chiefly to himself, in that 
evil is pleasure to him and 
good pleases him not. 



12 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

* there,' and the other vowels like the italic letters, 
in the words father (a not marked is the same 
sound but shorter), b^d, win, pm, machzne, htft, 
st<me, p&t, rule. ; pronounce h when not beginning 
a syllable like the German ck, and / in gelyfath, 
yfely deofle, sylfum, as v. Sound c as k, except 
in sothlice and ic, in which the letter was 
pronounced as ch in ' church ' ; sc should be pro- 
nounced sh. The^* in agen, God, wltegan, god 
may be pronounced (though not quite correctly) 
as in the modern ' good ' ; in the other words 
in the extract it happens to have the less 
usual sound of y in * young.' All other letters 
are to be pronounced as in modern English, 
and final e is always to be sounded. 

It may be useful to append a few remarks on some of the 
words occurring in the extract. Tha is the plural nominative 
of the demonstrative pronoun corresponding to our that ; 
the nominative singular is se (masc), seo (fern.), that (neut.) ; 
the word serves also as the definite article. The is an 
indeclinable relative, standing for 'who,' 'whom, 1 i which.' 
In ge-lyf-ath the middle syllable is the same as the second 
syllable in ' believe ' ; the verb ge-lyf-an corresponds to the 
German g-laub-en. Ne, not, is in Old English put before 
the verb. With thurh, through, compare the German durch. 
Agenne is accusative masculine singular of agen own ; com- 
pare the German eigen. Cyre, choice, is a masc. noun 
related to the verb ceosan to choose ; the corresponding 
German word is Kur. Hi, they, is the plural of he. Scoriath 
is the present tense plural of scorian, to refuse, a verb not 



I.] INTRODUCTORY 13 

preserved in modern English or German. JVa, here used 
for ' not,' is the modern provincial * no ' in ' that's no true. 1 
Ge-wyrd, fate, is the word which in later English became 
* weird. 1 For-than-the, because, is literally ' for-that-that. 1 
JVis ( = ne is) nan thing i is none thing 1 ; in Old English 
two negatives did not ' make an affirmative, 1 but were 
combined for emphasis as in Greek. Leas, false, lying ; 
compare 'leasing, 1 falsehood, in the English Bible. Wena, 
opinion ; connected with wenan, to ' ween, 1 think. Sothlice, 
1 soothly, 1 truly ; compare ' forsooth, 1 * in good sooth. 1 
Gewyrth, 3rd person sing, of ge-weorthan to take place, 
akin to the German werden to become. Ac, but ; not 
found in modern English or German. Ealle thitig, all 
things ; the word thing had the nom. plural like the 
singular. Cwceth, the same word as ' quoth. 1 Witega, pro- 
phet ; the word existed also in old German, and was 
corrupted into Weissager (as if it meant < wise-sayer '). 
Afandige, from afandian, to try. Manna, genitive plural of 
mann. Heora, genitive plural of he. JElcum, dative masc. 
sing, of celc, now ' each. 1 Sylle, give, is the modern l sell ? ; 
the word has changed its meaning. Fcerelde, dative of 
fcereld, behaviour ; connected with the verb ' to fare. 1 
A-funden-nyss (dative -nysse) is from afunden = Ger. erfun- 
den, invented, with the ending -?tyss, now -ness ; the word 
is fern., so that 'agen-rtf 1 (own) corresponds to the German 
' eigen-^r.' Talige, from talian, to impute, count ; compare 
' tale. 1 j£rest, first = Ger. erst. Mancyn, mankind ; the last 
part of the compound is our 'kin. 1 Be-swac, past tense of 
be-swican, to deceive. Theah is related to the modern Eng- 
lish ' though 1 and the German dock. Swithost, superlative of 
swzthe, strongly, very. To him sylfum : note the ending 
-m of the dative singular. Ge-licath, licath, are identical 
with the modern verb ' to like, 1 the former having the prefix 
ge- 9 frequently occurring in Old English and German verbs. 



i 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

§ 4. Object of this Book. 

The reader who has studied the foregoing 
pages with attention will have obtained a fairly 
correct notion of the general character of the 
language spoken by our ancestors a thousand or 
nine hundred years ago. The transformation of 
the English of King Alfred and Abbot ^Elfric 
into the widely different language which we 
speak to-day has, as we have already said, been 
the result of gradual changes. We do not pro- 
pose in this little volume to treat of these changes 
in their chronological sequence — to show, for 
instance, in what respects the English of Chaucer 
differs from that of Alfred, the English of Shaks- 
pere from that of Chaucer, and the English of 
the nineteenth century from that of the sixteenth. 
Information of this kind must be sought for in 
regular histories of the English language. Our 
purpose is merely to give some idea of the causes 
by which the more remarkable changes in the 
language were brought about, and to estimate 
the effect which these changes have had on its 
fitness as an instrument for the expression of 
thought. 

One class of changes in English, though from 
some points of view immensely important, will 



I.] INTRODUCTORY 15 

be left almost entirely out of the present discus- 
sion. We refer to the alteration in pronunciation, 
which has been so great, that, even if the language 
had in all other respects continued the same, 
a speech delivered in the English of the tenth 
century would have been unintelligible to a 
hearer of to-day. Striking as the changes in 
pronunciation are, they have had no direct effect 
on the character of the language as a means of 
expression. Our meaning is neither better nor 
worse conveyed because, for instance, stone, wine, 
foot, feet, are no longer pronounced like the Old 
English stdn, win, fot, fet. Still, there are some 
changes in pronunciation which have affected the 
expressive capacities of English indirectly, by 
causing other changes, or by obscuring the con- 
nexion of related words or forms ; and these will 
need to be mentioned in order to explain the 
results which they have ultimately produced. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 

Great as are the differences between the gram- 
mar of Old English and that of Modern English, 
the one has been developed gradually out of the 
other. We propose now to inquire into the 
causes to which this development has been due. 
The questions which have to be answered are two. 
First, why has the English language got rid of 
nearly all the multitude of grammatical forms 
which it once possessed ? Secondly, what new 
grammatical machinery has the language acquired 
during the last thousand years, and how was this 
new machinery obtained ? These two questions 
cannot be kept entirely separate, because each of 
the processes referred to — the disappearance of 
the older inflexions, and the development of new 
means of expressing grammatical relations — has 
by turns been the cause and the effect of the 

16 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 17 

other. In some cases the dying out of the ancient 
forms created a need which had to be supplied 
by the invention of new modes of expression ; 
in other cases the old inflexions were dropped 
because they had become superfluous, owing to 
the growth of other and more efficient means 
of indicating the functions of words in the sen- 
tence. Nevertheless, it will conduce to lucidity 
to discuss the two questions, as far as possible, 
apart from each other. 



§ 1. Simplification of Accidence. 

The progressive reduction of the number of 
inflexional forms is a phenomenon not at all 
peculiar to English. On the contrary, most of 
the inflected languages of which the history is 
known have, to a greater or less extent, under- 
gone the same kind of change. For example, 
although Modern High German is, as we have 
shown, much more complicated in its accidence 
than Modern English, it is much less so than 
the Old High German of a thousand years ago ; 
the grammar of Old High German is simpler 
than that of Primitive Germanic, which was 
spoken at the beginning of the Christian era; 
and Primitive Germanic itself had retained only 



1 8 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

a comparatively small remnant of the profusion 
of inflexional forms possessed by the Primitive 
Indo-Germanic tongue, from which it was de- 
, scended in common with Sanskrit, Greek, and 
Latin. We may note in passing that peasant 
German has lost much more of its original 
grammar than has the German spoken by edu- 
cated people. This fact teaches us that cul- 
ture is one of the influences which retard the 
process of simplification. But it should be re- 
membered that culture may exist without books : 
there have been peoples in which there was little 
or no reading and writing, but in which never- 
theless the arts of poetry and oratory were highly 
developed, and traditional correctness of speech 
was sedulously cultivated. 

It is not wonderful that the tendency to sim- 
plification of accidence should be widely preva- 
lent. Indeed, on a superficial view, we might 
naturally wonder that this tendency is not 
more conspicuously operative than is in fact the 
case. For even one's mother tongue obviously 
must require to be learnt; and nobody learns 
his mother tongue so perfectly as never to make 
any grammatical mistake. In a language with 
a great variety of conjugations and declensions, 
mistakes of grammar mostly consist in assimi- 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 19 

lating the inflexion of the less common words 
to the more familiar types. We might therefore 
expect that, between forgetfulness and the instinct 
for consistency, the rarer conjugations and de- 
clensions would always rapidly drop out of use, 
and that all inflexional languages would in a 
few generations approach perceptibly nearer to 
the ideal state in which the same grammatical 
relation should always be denoted by the same 
change in the form of a word. 

But in all matters of language the influence 
of tradition is extremely powerful. The mistakes 
or intentional innovations in grammar made by 
individuals are for the most part condemned by 
the community at large, and only few of them 
come to affect the general language. Probably 
most English children have sometimes said 
* mouses ' or ' speaked,' but these regularised 
forms do not appear in the speech of even 
illiterate adults. So the tendency to grammatical 
simplification in languages is usually slow in its 
working, unless it happens to be stimulated by 
some special cause. 

Among the causes which hasten the progress 
of languages towards grammatical simplicity, 
there are two that require particular notice. 
There are (1) phonetic change; and (2) the 



20 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

mixture of peoples speaking different languages, 
or different dialects of the same language. 



Phonetic Change. 

When we study the history of any language, 
we always discover that, at some period or other, 
certain of its elementary sounds — certain ' letters/ 
as we might call them, of its spoken alphabet — 
have undergone an alteration in pronunciation. 
The changes to which we here refer are un- 
conscious and unintentional, and are so very 
gradual that it would need an acute and attentive 
ear to discern any difference between the sound 
of a word as uttered by young men and by old 
men living at one time. But when, as is often 
the case, the pronunciation of a vowel or consonant 
becomes in each successive generation a little 
more unlike what it was at first, the total amount 
of change may in time be very great. If we 
could compare (by means of a phonograph or 
otherwise) the present pronunciation of some 
language with its pronunciation a few centuries 
ago, we might find, for instance, that all the 
a's had turned into #'s, or all the d's into /'s, 
or vice versa. More commonly, we should find 
that a particular vowel or consonant had changed 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 21 

into a certain other vowel or consonant whenever 
it occurred in the same part of a word (beginning, 
middle, or end); or whenever it came in an 
accented syllable; or whenever it came next 
to a certain other sound, or to any sound of a 
certain class ; and that under other conditions 
it had either undergone a different kind of change, 
or else had remained unaltered. 

The term ' phonetic change ' is conventionally 
restricted to that kind of unconscious alteration 
of sounds which has just been described. If we 
study any particular language as it is spoken 
to-day, and ascertain what sound in it represents 
each of the sounds of some older form of the 
language under each of the varieties of condition 
under which it occurred, we shall obtain a body 
of rules which are called the phonetic laws of 
the present stage of the language. It is often 
said that the phonetic laws applicable to one and 
the same dialect and date have no exceptions 
whatever. Whether this is absolutely true or 
not, it is so nearly true that whenever we meet 
with a seeming exception we shall be pretty safe 
in believing that there has been at work some 
other process than ' phonetic change' in the 
sense above explained. For instance, it is not a 
case of phonetic change that we say ' I broke/ 



22 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

where our ancestors said ' I brake.' What has 
happened is not that a has changed into o, but 
that the old past tense has been superseded by 
a new one, imitated from the participle broken. 
Again, an apparent exception to a phonetic law 
may be due to the fact that one dialect has 
borrowed a form from another dialect in which 
the course of phonetic change had been different. 

Why a particular phonetic change should take 
place in one language, dialect, or period and not 
in another is a question on which we cannot 
here enter. For our present purpose, it is enough 
to note the fact that the same original sound may 
develop quite differently in two dialects of the 
same language, and that a sound may continue 
for many centuries unaltered, and then enter on 
a course of rapid change. 

The results of phonetic change, so far as they 
affect the history of grammar, are of three kinds : 

1. Confluent development. Sometimes two origi- 
nally different sounds come to be represented in 
a later stage of the language by a single sound. 

Thus the Old English a and o (in certain positions) have 
yielded the Modern English o, so that hdl (whole) and fola 
(foal) now form a perfect rime. 

2. Divergent development. One and the same 
original sound may, owing to difference of con- 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 23 

ditions, yield two or more distinct sounds in the 

later language. 

Thus in Old English ic lade, I lead, and ic Icedde, I led, 
had the same vowel ; but because in one word the vowel 
was followed by a single and in the other by a double d, 
their modern forms have different vowels. 

3. Dropping of sounds. In some cases the 
phonetic law relating to a particular vowel or 
consonant is that, when it occurs under certain 
conditions, it will neither remain unchanged nor 
change into anything else, but will vanish 
altogether. 

Thus, an Old French /, if it comes at the end of a word, 
becomes silent in Modern French. Again, every short 
vowel which ended a word (of more than one syllable) in 
Old English has long ago dropped off, so that all the 
words which a thousand years ago were dissyllables with 
short vowel endings are now monosyllables. 

Now supposing that in any language the 
sounds which happen to be subject to these three 
kinds of phonetic change are those which are 
used in the inflexional endings, it is obvious that 
the result must be a considerable upsetting of 
the grammatical system. The effect, however, is 
not immediately to produce simplification. On 
the contrary, the tendency of ' divergent develop- 
ment' is to increase the number of declensions 
and conjugations, because the same original 



24 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap, 

termination becomes different in different words. 
The effect of ' confluent development ' and ' drop- 
ping of sounds ' is to make the inflexional 
system less efficient for its purpose by confound- 
ing different cases, persons, tenses, etc., under 
the same form. It is owing to changes of this 
sort in prehistoric times that the Latin language 
has the awkward defect of having only one 
form (Musae) for the genitive and dative singular 
and the nominative and vocative plural of cer- 
tain nouns. The same cause, also, accounts for 
the inconvenient peculiarity of Old English gram- 
mar, in having a large number of nouns with 
their nominative singular and nominative plural 
alike. This example is instructive, because it 
shows the fallacy of the notion sometimes main- 
tained, that phonetic change does not destroy 
inflexions till they have already become useless. 
In what may be called prehistoric continental 
English, the plural ending of many neuter nouns 
was ii. There came a time when it became a 
phonetic law that a final u always dropped off 
when it followed a heavy syllable, but remained 
after a light syllable. Hence in Old English as 
we know it the plural of scip (ship) was scipn, 
but the plural of hus (house) was kus, just like 
the singular. In this instance phonetic change 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 25 

produced two different effects : it made two 
declensions out of one, and it deprived a great 
many words of a useful inflexional distinction. 

We thus see that the direct result of phonetic 
change on the grammar of a language is chiefly x 
for evil : it makes it more complicated and less 
lucid. But when these inconveniences become 
too great to be endured, they provoke a re- 
action. The speakers of the language find out 
how to express needful grammatical distinctions 
by other than inflexional means ; or else they 
generalise the use of those inflexional forms that 
have happened to escape decay, applying them 
to other words than those to which they origi- 
nally belonged. In this way phonetic change 
leads indirectly to that kind of simplification 
which we shall find exemplified in the history 
of the English language. 

Mixture of Peoples. 

The second condition which we mentioned as 
favouring grammatical simplification was the 
mixture of peoples speaking different languages 
or dialects. 

1 Not exclusively so; for it may hasten the disappearance of 
inconvenient forms which traditional inertia might otherwise have 
retained after better modes of expression had come into existence. 



26 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Let it be imagined that an island inhabited 
by people speaking a highly inflected language 
receives a large accession of foreigners to its 
population. To make the case as simple as 
possible, let it be further imagined that there is 
no subsequent communication with the outside 
world, and that nobody on the island can read 
or write. What may be expected to happen? 

It is a matter of general experience that a 
person who tries to learn a foreign language 
entirely by conversation finds the vocabulary 
easier to acquire than the grammar. And it is 
wonderful how well, for the common purposes of 
intercourse, one can often get on in a foreign 
country by using the bare stems of words, with- 
out any grammar at all. Many Englishmen of 
the uneducated class have lived for years in 
Germany, and managed to make themselves fairly 
well understood, without ever troubling themselves 
with the terminations of adjectives or articles, or 
the different ways of forming the plural in nouns. 
In our imaginary island the foreigners will soon 
pick up a stock of words ; if the island language 
is like the Germanic ones, in which the main 
stress is never on the inflexional syllables, their 
task will be much easier. The grammatical 
endings will be learnt more slowly, and only the 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 27 

most striking will be learnt at all The natives 
will soon manage to understand the broken jar- 
gon of the new comers, and to adopt it in con- 
versation with them, avoiding the use of those 
inflexions which they discover to be puzzling to 
their hearers. But if they acquire the habit of 
using a simplified grammar in their dealings with 
foreigners, they will not entirely escape using it 
in their intercourse with each other. If there is 
intermarriage and absorption of the strangers in 
the native population, the language of the island 
must in a few generations be deprived of a con- 
siderable number of its inflexional forms. 

Let us now consider a somewhat different case. 
Suppose that the two peoples that live together 
and blend into one, instead of speaking widely 
distinct languages, speak dialects not too far apart 
to allow of a good deal of mutual understanding 
from the first, or at any rate as soon as the ear 
has been accustomed to the constant differences 
of pronunciation. The two dialects, let us sup- 
pose, have a large common vocabulary, with 
marked differences in inflexion — a very frequent 
case, because phonetic change is apt to cause 
greater divergences in the unstressed endings than 
in the stressed stems of words. The result will be 
much the same as when peoples speaking distinct 



28 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

languages are mingled; indeed, there are reasons 
for thinking that the change will be even more 
rapid and decisive. For one thing, the blending 
of the two peoples is likely to take place more 
quickly. Then, as the speakers of neither dialect 
will be disposed to take the other as their model 
of correct speech, two different sets of inflexional 
forms will for a time be current in the same 
district, and there will arise a hesitation and 
uncertainty about the grammatical endings that 
will tend to render them indistinct in pronuncia- 
tion, and hence not worth preserving. 

We see, therefore, that the simplification of the 
inflexional machinery of a language is powerfully 
stimulated by the absorption of large bodies of 
foreigners into the population and by the mixture 
of different dialects. It has now to be shown 
how far these causes were actually in operation 
during the formative period of the English 
language. 

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who settled in 
Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, though 
speaking substantially the same language, brought 
with them their peculiarities of dialect. They 
established themselves independently in different 
parts of the country; and, in consequence of local 
separation, their original divergences of speech 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 29 

gradually became wider, so that in three or four 
centuries the kinds of English spoken in Wessex, 
Mercia, Kent, and Northumbria had become 
markedly different; and each of these dialectal 
areas doubtless included several minor varieties of 
local speech. In the main, the Old English dialects 
seem to have differed but little in their vocabu- 
lary, and the diversity of pronunciation, though 
considerable, was not sufficient often to disguise 
the identity of the words. Except for the 
grammatical differences, a Kentishman and a 
Northumbrian of the eighth century would pro- 
bably find it easier to understand each other's 
speech than their rustic descendants do at the 
present day. The increase of population, and 
the establishment of political unity over larger 
and larger areas during the succeeding centuries, 
necessarily resulted in the formation of mixed 
dialects, and this contributed to the decay of the 
inflexional system of the language. 

A further impulse in the same direction was 
given by the conquests and settlements of the 
Danes and Northmen, which fill so large a space 
in the annals of England from the ninth to the 
eleventh century. The vast importance of those 
events is perhaps not adequately appreciated 
by ordinary readers of history. What we are 



30 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

accustomed to regard as the history of England 
during these centuries is really little more than 
the history of English England ; the larger portion 
of England which was under Scandinavian rule 
had no chroniclers. Of the Danish dynasty 
which reigned at York we know hardly more 
than the names of the kings ; and the history of 
Danish East Anglia and Mercia is even more 
obscure. It is only by the indirect evidence of 
place-names and modern dialects that we learn 
that in some districts of England the population 
must at one time have been far more largely 
Scandinavian than English, and that important 
Scandinavian settlements existed in almost every 
county north of the Thames. In the year 1017 
Cnut of Denmark conquered the throne of Eng- 
land, and his strong rule gave to the country 
a degree of political unity such as it had never 
had before. Under the succeeding kings, even 
under the Englishman Edward the Confessor, the 
highest official posts in the kingdom continued to 
be held by men of Danish origin. The result of 
these new conditions was the extension of Scandi- 
navian influence to those parts of the country 
which had previously been most purely English. 
The language spoken by the Danes and North- 
men was an older form of that in which the 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 31 

Icelandic sagas were written. It was so nearly- 
like Old English that a Scandinavian settler in 
England would very soon learn to understand the 
speech of his neighbours, so far as the mere word- 
stems were concerned. After a little experience 
of English habits of pronunciation, he would be 
able to recognise most of the words as identical 
with those of his native tongue. The grammati- 
cal inflexions, however, would be more puzzling, 
many of them being quite dissimilar in the two 
languages. Under such conditions there must 
have arisen mixed dialects, mainly English, but 
containing many Danish words, and characterised 
by the dropping or confused use of some of the 
terminations distinctive of cases, genders, and 
persons. We possess, in fact, one short speci- 
men of Old English as it was written by a Dane. 
This is an inscription found at Aldborough in 
Yorkshire, which has been read as follows: Ulf 
let aneran cyrice for hanum and for Gunware 
sdula, i.e. ' Ulf caused a church to be built for 
himself and for the soul of Gunwaru.' Probably 
the sentence is more correct Old English than 
Ulf habitually spoke; but he has made the 
mistake of putting the Danish pronoun hanum 
instead of the English him. It is a pity that we 
have no more actual examples to show what 



32 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Danish-English was like in the eleventh century. 
But since we know for a fact that those districts 
in which the Danes had settled are precisely those 
in which English grammar became simplified 
most rapidly, there can be no doubt that the 
Scandinavian admixture in the population was 
one of the causes that contributed to bring about 
the disuse of the Old English inflexions. 

After the Scandinavian settlements, the next 
great event that affected the development of the 
English language was the Norman Conquest. It 
is not likely that the great political change of 
a.d. 1066 had any marked immediate effect on 
the actual speech of the people. It is, however, 
certain that the grammar of the literary language 
began to show very striking changes early in the 
twelfth century. The ending -an of the southern 
dialect came to be written -en, and all the 
inflexional endings consisting in vowels were 
reduced to a uniform -e. The explanation is, no 
doubt, that the indistinctness in the pronunciation 
of the endings, which had gradually invaded the 
popular language, now manifested itself in writing. 
When the monasteries, the homes of the literary 
class, were filled with foreign monks, the superiors 
in education of their native brethren, the ver- 
nacular culture could not but suffer. The tradi- 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 33 

tional orthography ceased to be maintained, and 
there was less and less solicitude for traditional 
correctness of expression on the part of the 
writers. Hence, in all probability, the alteration 
in the language between 1066 and 11 50 appears 
from the literary remains more rapid than it 
actually was. 1 

While, however, the apparent immediate effect 
of the Conquest on the English language is partly 
an illusion, there is no doubt that that event did 
introduce a new influence which operated with 
great, and for two centuries constantly increasing, 
effect. Under the Norman and Angevin kings 
there was a great influx of Frenchmen into the 
country. The language of the court and the 
nobility was French ;-amongst the middle classes 
every one who aspired to social consideration 
endeavoured to become fluent in the fashionable 
language. In the grammar-schools boys were, 
even down to the fourteenth century, taught their 
Latin through the medium of French. The 
writing and reading of English, apparently, almost 

1 The probability of this view is confirmed by a study of Domes- 
day Book. This record, compiled in 1086, contains thousands of 
English names of persons and places, written phonetically by Nor- 
man scribes. The forms exhibit the changes above referred to with 
a uniformity that does not appear in the spelling of native writers 
until about a century later. 

D 



34 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

entirely ceased to be a part of regular school 
teaching, for many of the extant early Middle 
English manuscripts were written by persons who 
evidently had never learnt to spell their native 
language, but rendered the words phonetically 
according to the French values of the letters. In 
the thirteenth century it would seem that a very 
considerable portion of the population of England 
must have been bilingual. How far-reaching the 
effect of the foreign influence was at this period 
may be seen from the large number of Old 
French words that have found their way into our 
rustic dialects. 

From what has already been said, it will be 
evident that the natural tendency of this con- 
dition of things would be to promote the disuse 
of the traditional inflexional system of English. 
It is impossible to determine to what extent the 
actual change which took place in this direction 
is to be ascribed to the use of a foreign language 
by the side of the vernacular, because we have no 
means of measuring the efficiency of the other 
powerful causes which were working to the same 
result. But that the change, at least in the 
southern part of the kingdom, was materially 
accelerated by this agency there seems to be no 
reasonable doubt. 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 35 

It is now time to turn from generalities to the 
consideration of some specific instances of the 
simplification which has taken place in English 
accidence. We will begin with the declension of 
substantives. 

Old English had many declensions of sub- 
stantives — how many we can hardly say, because 
it is not the custom to denote them by num- 
bers as is done in Latin and Greek grammar, 
and scholars might find it difficult to decide what 
amount of variation should be regarded as con- 
stituting a separate ' declension.' However, there 
was one declension which formed its genitive 
singular in -es and its nominative (and accusative) 
plural in -as ; and there were other declensions 
in which -a, -an, -^appear as endings for the 
genitive singular, and -a, -an, -u, -e for the nomi- 
native plural ; and yet others in which the geni- 
tive singular or the nominative plural, or both, 
were like the nominative singular, or different from 
it in only the vowel of the root syllable. Out 
of all these the -es and -as declension is the only 
one that remains in general use. Except for a 
few irregular plurals, all modern English sub- 
stantives are declined with the endings (written 
-s and -es or -s) which descend from the Old 
English -es and -as. 



36 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Now this is obviously an instance of the 
famous principle of 'survival of the fittest.' For 
amongst the Old English case-endings -es was the 
only one that never meant anything else than a 
genitive singular, and -as was the only one 
that never meant anything else than a nominative 
or accusative plural. Thus, hanan stood for the 
genitive, dative, and accusative singular and the 
nominative and accusative plural of hana, a cock ; 
gife might be either genitive, dative, or accusative 
singular, and gifa either nominative, accusative, 
or genitive plural, of gifu, a gift ; and so 
forth. 

It is a popular error to suppose that it was 
in consequence of the Norman Conquest that 
the -es and -as declension came to supersede 
all the rest. In fact the change began much 
earlier; and it began in the northern dialect. 
For this there were special reasons. 

We have just seen that the noun-declension 
of southern Old English (from which our ex- 
amples were taken) was full of ambiguities; the 
reason being that the inherited Germanic case- 
endings, originally distinct, had undergone 
phonetic change to such an extent that many of 
them had come to coincide in form. In the 
northern dialect the state of things was still 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 37 

worse, because in that dialect the termination -an 
regularly dropped its nasal; and further, the 
mixture of different local varieties of speech had 
led to a general indistinctness and uncertainty 
in the pronunciation of those vowels which served 
as case-endings, so that in some words the 
terminations -a, -<z, -e> -0, and -u seem to be used 
indiscriminately in the same text. As an instance 
of the greater imperfection of the noun-declension 
in Northumbrian as compared with southern Old 
English, we may refer to the word ' eye.' In the 
southern dialect the nominative and accusative 
singular were eage, the genitive and dative 
singular and the nominative and accusative plural 
were eagan. But in the northern dialect ego is 
found for all these cases. 

In the Durham Gospels, written about the 
middle of the tenth century, we may see how 
this state of confusion had already begun to be 
remedied. The old declensions still survived; 
but when there was need for greater distinctness 
of expression than the old forms afforded, the 
endings -es for the genitive and -as for the plural 
nominative were substituted for those of other 
declensions. Accordingly, many of the substan- 
tives which in West Saxon (i.e. southern Old 
English) belong to other declensions have in the 



38 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Durham Book occasionally, though not exclusively, 
the -es and -as forms. On the opposite page 
is a table showing a few comparative specimens 
of the inflexion in the two dialects, the new forms 
being indicated by italics. 

It is true that in the Northumbrian dialect of 
the tenth century the substitution of -es and -as 
for the other equivalent terminations had merely 
begun. But a change which constituted so 
great an improvement in distinctness of expression 
could not fail to go on. Before three centuries 
had passed, it had extended itself to nearly all 
substantives. The increased intercourse between 
the different parts of the country, which was the 
result of the political unification of England, led 
to the introduction of these northern forms, re- 
commended by their superior clearness, into the 
grammar of the midland dialects, from which our 
modern literary English is descended. To some 
extent, however, the advantage which the language 
had gained by the reduction of its many de- 
clensions to one was lost by the effect of phonetic 
change. The tendency to increase the propor- 
tionate stress on the body of the word, and 
consequently to obscure the pronunciation of the 
endings, caused the original -es and -as to be 
pronounced alike. Hence in Middle English 



II.1 



THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 39 




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4 o THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

kinges, for example, stood for both the genitive 
singular and the nominative plural of king. 

In southern Old English, the system of noun- 
inflexion, though somewhat better than that of 
the northern dialect, was still, as we have seen, so 
imperfect that most of its forms were inadequate 
to indicate with certainty the case and number of 
a word. It became still more defective when — as 
happened in the twelfth century — all the vowels 
of the inflexional endings came to be represented 
by one indistinct sound, represented by the letter 
e, and when, moreover, many monosyllabic nomina- 
tives became dissyllabic by the addition of a final 
-e due to assimilation to other cases. The defects 
of the system were obviated to some extent by 
applying the suffix -en, which was inherited in 
words like sterren from sterre star, to form the 
genitive and the plural of words in which the 
regular case-endings were ambiguous. There was, 
in fact, a definite movement in early southern 
Middle English towards making -en the regu- 
lar plural ending of nouns. We find in the 
thirteenth century such forms as trewen, trees 
(where Old English had treowu), schoon, shoes 
(Old English seeds), lambren, lambs, calveren, 
calves, eyren, eggs (Old English lambru, cealfru, 
Tzgrn). This tendency was arrested in the four- 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 41 

teenth century by the spread of the -es forms 
from the midland dialects. But the rustic speech 
of the south-western counties has still a few 
plurals like housen (Old English hus); and modern 
standard English says children (Old English 
cildru y cild y modern northern and north midland 
dialects childer), and in more or less old-fashioned 
diction also brethren (Old English brothor, brothru, 
Old Norse brcethr) and kine (Old English cy, 
modern Scotch and northern dialects kye). It is 
somewhat curious that although, as we have seen, 
the original -n as a plural ending had already 
been lost in the Northumbrian dialect of the tenth 
century, the modern Scotch plurals of ox and eye 
are onsen and een\ and it is still more curious 
that in Scotch and in most provincial dialects the 
plural of shoe is shoon, though in all varieties of 
Old English it was seeds. The anomaly, however, 
like other anomalies in language, is capable of 
explanation. The genitive plural of oxa in Old 
Northumbrian was oxna y and that of ego (eye) was 
egna. The need for making a formal difference 
between singular and plural in these words was 
supplied by transferring the n from the genitive 
to the nominative plural. As for the word shoe, it 
ended in a vowel ; and as most other monosyllabic 
nouns with vowel endings made the genitive 



42 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

plural in -na, this word was assimilated in de- 
clension to the words which it resembled in form. 

It may at first sight appear strange, seeing 
that the Middle English -es has come so near to 
being the universal plural ending, that the pro- 
cess has not been carried out to its limit, and 
that we have still our half-score of ' irregular 
plurals.' But the desire for uniformity has had 
a very small share in the evolution of English 
grammar. The changes that have taken place, 
where they are not due to the operation of 
phonetic law, have mostly been produced either 
by the attempt to avoid ambiguity, or by the 
disposition to save time or trouble in speaking. 
Now the plurals men, teeth, geese, mice, lice, oxen, 
are unambiguous in form ; if we were to sub- 
stitute the ' regular ' forms, they would to the 
ear be identical with the genitives, man's, tooth's, 
goose's, and so on. Moreover, the irregular 
plurals are all either shorter or easier to pro- 
nounce than the regular forms would be. There 
were thus two good reasons for not assimilating 
the declension of these words to the prevailing 
type. It is true that a few of the plurals 
anciently formed by vowel-change have not 
survived : for instance, where Old English had 
boc, bee, we now say book, books. But if bee 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 43 

had come down into modern English, it would 
by phonetic law have become beech} which 
would have had the double disadvantage of not 
showing its relationship to the singular, and of 
coinciding in form with a quite different word. 

There remain to be noticed two or three 
points in the history of the simplification in the 
declension of substantives. For the genitive 
plural the Old English endings were, according 
to the declension, -a and -ena. The latter, as 
the more distinct and unambiguous, had already 
in Old English begun to encroach on the territory 
of the former ; and in early Middle English this 
movement was continued, -ene (two syllables) 
being in monosyllabic nouns generally preferred 
to -e. Thus we have kingene king for ' king of 
kings.' With longer words this ending was too 
unwieldy, and speakers seem early to have fallen 
into the habit of using the plural nominative 
form (at first in dissyllabic nouns, afterwards in 
others) as a genitive. Thus the one form king-es, 
which already had three functions, expressing the 
genitive singular and the nominative and accu- 
sative plural, came to stand for the genitive 
plural as well. Ambiguity was for a time 

1 Because the same cause that turned into e had also altered 
the pronunciation of the c. 



44 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

prevented by the inflection of the accompanying 
article or adjective. But in the end these parts 
of speech lost their case-endings, and the result 
was that a form like horses had nothing to show 
whether it stood for a genitive singular or a 
nominative, accusative, or genitive plural. This 
remains as a real defect in modern spoken Eng- 
lish, though in writing we obviate it by a device 
of recent origin, using horses for the nominative 
(and accusative) plural, horse s for the genitive 
singular, and horses' for the genitive plural. 
This weakness in our system of inflexions would 
have been seriously inconvenient, if it had not 
been for the introduction of the practice of using 
the preposition of instead of the genitive in- 
flexion — an innovation respecting which we shall 
afterwards have to speak. 

Besides the genitive, Old English had two 
other inflected cases, the accusative and the 
dative. But phonetic change had already made 
such havoc with the original Germanic endings 
that even in southern Old English the 
accusative and nominative were always alike 
in the plural, and very frequently, perhaps 
most frequently, in the singular also. In the 
northern dialect the formal difference between 
the cases, in substantives, had almost dis- 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 45 

appeared. When a case-distinction has become 
a mere occasional irregularity, the speakers of 
the language have learnt to do without it, and 
have no motive for resisting the influences that 
tend to abolish it. The fact that the articles 
and adjectives were inflected rendered the accus- 
ative ending of substantives less necessary ; and 
with the growing habit of placing the parts of 
a sentence in one uniform order, the subject and 
object could be quite well distinguished without 
the aid of inflexions. Hence the accusative, as 
an inflected case of substantives, disappeared 
early in Middle English. The dative lasted 
longer; in fact we have some faint traces of it 
still. In Old English the dative singular ended 
in -e or (rarely) in -a, and in one large class of 
words in -an ; in Middle English these endings 
became -e and -en. The ending of the dative 
plural was -urn, but this was weakened in late 
Old English into -on and -an, becoming -en in 
Middle English. 1 As the case of the indirect 
object the dative did not survive long in Middle 
English, but when governed by prepositions it re- 
tained its endings down to the fourteenth century. 
In the latter part of that century — for instance, 

1 The same change has occurred in German, where -en or -« is 
now the universal ending of the dative plural. 



46 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

in the writings of Chaucer — the dative endings 
rarely appear except in phrases that had become 
adverbs, such as on live, which has in modern 
English been shortened to 'alive.' The reason 
why alive has a v, while life has an /, is that 
the Old English f between vowels was pro- 
nounced v. Hence, while the Old English nomi- 
native lif is represented in modern English by 
' life,' its dative life is represented by the last 
syllable of 'alive.' There is one dative plural 
surviving in modern English, the adverb whilom. 
Here the Old English form -um still remains, 
not even having undergone the Middle English 
alteration to -en\ an instance of the important 
fact that some peculiarity in the meaning of a 
word will occasionally cause it to be exempted 
from the normal effect of phonetic change. 

The case-inflexion of pronouns is more per- 
manent than that of nouns. As any personal 
pronoun is far more frequent in use than any 
individual noun, the use of the case-distinction in 
pronouns is more a matter of fixed habit. But 
already in Old English the dative and accusative 
had become alike for the pronouns of the first and 
second persons in both numbers ; and in Middle 
English these two cases became confused together 
also in the third person. A fact not very easy to 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 47 

account for is that it was the dative and not the 
accusative form that finally prevailed. 1 Our 
modern 'objectives,' him t her, 'em, represent the 
Old English datives him, hire, heom. The Old 
English masculine accusative hine survives only 
in the 'tin ('I see 'un') of the south-western 
dialects. 

We now come to what is the most remarkable, 
and one of the most beneficial, of all the changes 
which the English language has undergone ■/— the 
substitution of ' natural ' for ' grammatical ' gender. 
It is not easy for us English people to under- 
stand what a wonderful change this really was. 
We are apt to look on it as the most natural 
thing in the world that ' gender ' should corre- 
spond to sex : that masculine and feminine nouns 
should be those denoting males and females 
respectively, and that neuter nouns should be 
those which denote objects which are not re- 
garded as possessing sex. 2 / And yet this state 

1 The explanation may perhaps be that pronouns referring to 
persons occurred more frequently in the case of the indirect object 
than in that of the direct object. The ' objective ' case of the neuter 
it (Old English hit) is it, from the accusative, not him from the 
dative. 

2 In absolute strictness, we ought to say that in modern English 
the masculine and feminine genders are restricted to nouns denoting 
persons, or things in which we see some analogy to personality, 
while the neuter gender applies to designations of things not 



48 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

of things cannot be so very natural ; for the fact 
is that English is the only language, among 
those that are at all generally known, in which 
it exists. In Sanskrit, Greek, Latin (and its 
descendants, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese), 
German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Welsh, Irish, 
Russian, and innumerable other languages, gender 
(at least with regard to names of inanimate 
things), is a mere useless classification of nouns ; 
that is to say, it expresses no distinctions in 
thought. So it was in all dialects of English, 
so far as we know, as late as the year iooo. 
But two centuries later, the ' Ormulum/ a metrical 
harmony of the Gospels written in the East 
Midland dialect, shows that gender had come 
to be entirely dependent on meaning. Instead 
of being a useless complication in the grammar, 
it had become a valuable means of expression. 

This unique and momentous change, completed, 
so far as one dialect is concerned, in a space of 

regarded as personal. A personified abstraction is regarded im- 
aginatively as male or female, and is spoken of as ' he ' or ' she ' 
accordingly ; so, too, with certain material objects, as the sun, 
the moon, a ship. On the other hand, a baby, or an animal, 
may be called ' it ' instead of ' he ' or ' she,' when not distinctly 
regarded as a personal being. In the latter case, the absence of 
a common-gender pronoun causes us to avail ourselves of the 
liberty of using the neuter gender more frequently than we other- 
wise should. 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 49 

two centuries, evidently requires to be accounted 
for. It is closely connected with another change 
of which we find evidence in the same text. 
The disuse of inflexion, which we have seen to 
be a natural consequence of the admixture of 
a foreign element in the population, had in the 
Danish part of England gone so far that the 
adjective had ceased to mark gender or case 
by difference of termination; and the article 
the was used indeclinably just as in modern 
English. Hence the gender of a noun had no 
other effect on the sentence than that of de- 
termining the choice of the pronoun referring 
to it. As the inflexional reminders no longer 
existed, the traditional gender of the nouns was 
easily forgotten, and "the pronouns he, she, and 
it came to be used with strict reference to the 
meaning of the nouns for which they were 
substitutes. 

The East Midland dialect, as has been already 
said, is the ancestor of our modern literary English. 
The southern dialects kept up the old unmeaning 
genders, and the inflexion of the adjective and 
article, to some extent down to the fourteenth 
century. Perhaps the final disappearance of 
' grammatical ' gender, for which there were many 
causes, was promoted by the extensive use of 



\n 



50 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the French language in England; at any rate 
instances have been found in Early Middle 
English in which the gender of nouns is assimi- 
lated to that of their French synonyms. The 
uncertainty thus arising would naturally strengthen 
the tendency to adopt the significant gender of 
the East Midland dialect. 

In the writings of Chaucer, which extend to 
the end of the fourteenth century, the adjective, 
though no longer inflected for gender and case, 
still retains some traces of its grammatical 
endings. The plural was marked by a final e\ 
and an adjective also took a final e when 
preceded by an article or other defining word. 

But in the following century these endings 
quickly disappeared, in obedience to a tendency 
which is the most conspicuous feature in the 
later development of English grammar, the 
tendency to reduce the number of syllables in 
words wherever it was possible. The movement 
towards monosyllabism continued even into the 
nineteenth century. Within the memory of living 
persons it was still usual in the reading of the 
Bible or the Liturgy to make two syllables of 
such words as loved and changed, which are 
now pronounced in one syllable. The shortening 
tendency has so widely prevailed that every short 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 51 

vowel that ended a word in Old English has 
dropped off. In Chaucer's English the various 
forms of the verb ' to love ' were all dissyllables : 
(to) loven or (to) love, I love, (we) loven, (I) 
lovede, (we) loveden. In modern English the 
only parts of the verb that are not monosyllables 
are loving, and the archaic lovest, loveth, lovedst. 
Although our grammar is almost entirely of East 
Midland origin, the form loveth which belonged to 
that dialect has been displaced by the northern 
form loves, which had the recommendation of 
being more easily contracted into a mono- 
syllable. 

As we have already remarked, the simplifica- 
tion of English grammar has not been in any 
considerable degree due to the desire for uni- 
formity. If such a desire had been characteristic 
of the English mind, we should certainly have 
got rid of the complicated system of strong 
verbs : but in spite of the many changes which 
that system has undergone in detail, it remains 
just as intricate as it was in Old English. One 
reason is that the strong preterites gave, shook, 
came, rode, and the like, are easier to pronounce 
than gived, shaked, corned, rided. The instinct 
for regularity has been too feeble to overcome 
the resistance of tradition when supported by 



52 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the preference for the phonetically easier form. 
It is true that a few verbs that were strong in 
Old English are now * regular ' ; but there are 
quite as many instances of the contrary change. 
In the modern dug and stuck (formerly digged, 
sticked\ we have actually a new strong con- 
jugation. The modern forms, it may be noted, 
are easier to pronounce than the old ones. 

There is, however, one point in the conjugation 
of verbs which does exhibit the influence of the 
tendency to uniformity. In Old English most of 
the strong preterites had different vowels in the 
singular and plural, as in ic sang, we sungon. 
This was the case also in Middle English ; but 
the fact that in modern English the weak preterite 
has the same form for singular and plural has 
led to the disappearance of the distinction in the 
strong verbs also ; we use sang in both cases. 
The second person singular had in Old English 
strong verbs the same vowel as the plural, and 
had an ending different from that of the weak 
verbs : thu sunge, thu lufodest. In modern English 
the old form has been superseded by sangest } after 
the analogy of the weak verbs. 

The only feature in the simplification of English 
accidence that remains to be mentioned is the dis- 
appearance of the subjunctive mood. In Old 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 53 

English the subjunctive played as important a 
part as in modern German, and was used in much 
the same way. Its inflexion differed in several 
respects from that of the indicative. The only 
formal trace of the old subjunctive still remain- 
ing, except the use of be and were> is the omission 
of the final s in the third person singular of 
verbs. And even this is rapidly dropping out 
of use, its only remaining function being to 
emphasise the uncertainty of a supposition. Per- 
haps in another generation the subjunctive forms 
will have ceased to exist except in the single 
instance of were, which serves a useful function, 
although we manage to dispense with a corre- 
sponding form in other verbs. 

§ 2. New Grammatical Material. 

The disappearance of the Old English inflexions 
is only half the story of the development of 
English grammar. A considerable amount of 
new grammatical material has been introduced, 
to serve the needs of expression in cases where 
the old machinery has become inefficient through 
phonetic change and other causes, or where it 
was from the beginning inadequate for its 
purpose. 



54 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

We have now to see from what sources this 
new material was derived, and what were the 
necessities which led to its adoption. 

It is not very often that a language enriches 
its grammatical system by adoption from other 
tongues ; but owing to the peculiar circumstances 
of English its history presents a few examples of 
this rare phenomenon. In Old English the per- 
sonal pronouns of the third person were as follows : 







Singular. 




Plural. 




Masculine. 


Feminine. 


Neuter. 




Nominative 


he- 


heo, hie, hi 


hit 


hie, hi 


Accusative 


nine 


hie, hi 


hit 


hie, hi 


Genitive 


his 


hire 


his 


heora 


Dative 


him 


hire 


him 


heom 



It will be seen from this table that the words 
'he,' 'she,' and 'they' were very nearly alike; 
and in the process of phonetic change they came 
to be represented in southern Middle English by 
the one form he} In the same way, the single 
form here came to stand both for ' her ' (genitive 
and dative) and. for 'their.' This ambiguity of 
forms was a defect which the language had no 
means of remedying from its own resources. But 
it so happened that in the parts of England 

1 In the dialects of the south-western counties he is still used for 
the feminine as well as for the masculine pronoun. " He is their 
mother " is one of the many examples quoted in the English Dialect 
Dictionary. 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 55 

which were largely inhabited by Danes the native 
pronouns were supplanted by the Scandinavian 
pronouns which are represented by the modern 
she} they, them, their. These forms, recommended 
by their superior clearness, gradually made their 
way from their original home in the north and 
the north-east midlands into the dialects of the 
rest of England. Their progress, however, was 
not very rapid : Chaucer uses she, but his her 
serves for the genitive, dative, and accusative of 
the feminine singular and the genitive plural. 
This is much the same state of things as exists 
in modern German, where ihr Haus may be 
either ' her house ' or ' their house ' (Ihr Haus, 
written with a capital /, but pronounced in the 
same way, is - your house '), and ihr may also 
mean 'to her' and 'you.' Perhaps the want of 
distinction between the pronouns did not often 
occasion any actual misunderstanding, but clearly 
the introduction of the Danish forms was a real 
improvement. 

In some other points English has found means 
to improve its pronouns without calling in foreign 

1 The origin of this pronoun is unexplained, but the fact that 
they, them, their, represent Scandinavian demonstrative pronouns 
favours the hypothesis that she is connected in some obscure way 
with the Old Norse feminine demonstratives su and sid, which had 
often the function of personal pronouns. 



56 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

aid. One defect of the Old English pronominal 
system was that his was both masculine and 
neuter. While gender was merely ' grammatical ' 
this did not greatly matter. But when gender 
became significant, people began to feel that the 
use of his referring to inanimate things involved 
a sort of personification. We see traces of 
this feeling in the English Bible of 1611, where 
his is the ordinary genitive of it (or, as for 
this date it is perhaps more correct to say, the 
corresponding possessive pronoun), but her is 
sometimes used where it was felt that a male 
personification would be very inappropriate. Still 
earlier (in 1534), we find Tindale writing: "If 
salt have loste hyr saltnes, what shall be seasoned 
ther with ? " In North West Midland writings we 
find it (hit) used as a possessive pronoun as early 
as the fourteenth century, and this use is still 
common in dialects. The first writer, so far as is 
known, to append the regular possessive ending 
to it was the foreigner, Florio, who uses its in 
1598, and several times in his later works. 
Shakspere has one or two examples of the 
possessive it (" Go to it grandam, and it grandam 
shall give it a plum "), and in those plays which 
exist only in editions published after his death its 
occurs a few times. The Bible of 161 1 has no 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 57 

its', in one passage (Lev. xxv. 5) we read "that 
groweth of it own accord," but in the modern 
editions its has been substituted. The use of its 
became general in the seventeenth century, but 
for a long time there seems to have been a feeling 
that the older his or her was more dignified. 

Another beneficial change in English pronouns 
was due to the accident that — in accordance with 
the tendency towards shortening, of which we 
have before spoken — the final n in unemphatic 
monosyllables was often dropped. (Examples 
may be seen in the indefinite article a, which is 
an unemphatic form of the numeral one, and in 
i\ d 1 for in and 0//.) It was this circumstance 
that produced the difference between the forms 
of the same pronoun in ' This is my book ' and 
* This book is mine.' It is true that the full 
forms mine and thine long continued to be used 
before a noun beginning with a vowel or h, as 
in mine arm, mine host, which we still retain in 
poetry and in rhetorical use; but in the main 
my and thy were the forms for the attributive 
possessive, and mine and thine for the absolute 
possessive. The ending of mine and thine was 
imitated in hern, his;/, otirn, yourn, and theirn 
(some of which go back to the fourteenth cen- 
tury), but these forms survive only as vulgarisms. 



58 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

In educated English, however, the want of an 
* absolute ' possessive has been supplied, except 
in the case of his, by tacking on the ending of 
possessive nouns to the ordinary possessive pro- 
noun. We say 'this house is yours? just as 
we say ' this house is John's.' Perhaps it would 
have been better if the literary language had 
accepted hisn, but from some cause it did not 
do so. 

It cannot be said that the prevalence of the 
French language in England down to the four- 
teenth century has left many traces in modern 
English grammar. We get from French the so- 
called feminine ending -ess, which we now add 
quite freely to native English words; but this 
does not strictly belong to grammar, any more 
than does our adoption of many other foreign 
suffixes, such as -ment and -ize. However, as 
the adoption of -ess has been mentioned, we may 
call attention to the curious fact that this ending 
has never been used in English for what one 
might have thought its most natural purpose, 
the formation of names of female animals. The 
few words that we have of this kind, like tigress, 
lioness, are not of English origin, but were adopted 
from Old French. In spite of the analogy of 
these substantives, it seems always to have been 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 59 

felt that the ending was appropriate only to 
designations of persons. 

Probably it is in some degree owing to French 
influence that our language was able to develop 
one useful piece of grammatical machinery — 
namely, an additional mode of expressing the 
notion of the genitive case. We can still say 
' David's son,' as our ancestors a thousand years 
ago said Dauldes snnu (or, less frequently, se sunn 
Denudes)', but we can also express the same 
meaning by saying 'the son of David,' which 
corresponds to the French le fils de David. In 
Old English of was mainly used where we should 
now use 'from' or 'out of.' The same sense 
also belongs to the French de. There are in 
Old English a few special instances in which of 
has a genitival sense (as in se cyning of Norwegan, 
the king of Norway), but the use of the preposition 
as a regular sign of the genitive first appears in 
the twelfth century. We do not know whether, 
apart from French influence, the English language 
would not have evolved this convenient device 
for obviating the ambiguities arising from the 
decay of the old inflexions ; but imitation of 
French idiom certainly helped it to attain general 
currency. The many nouns adopted from French 
naturally formed their genitive after the French 



60 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

pattern ; and the new form was also applied to 
those nouns which had lost their distinctive 
genitive inflexions. Ultimately it came to be 
admissible in the case of all substantives. If the 
inflected genitive had been driven out of use by 
the ' phrasal ' genitive the result would have been 
a weakening of the language — a distinct loss of 
condensation and energy. Fortunately this did 
not happen ; the form in -s was retained, but 
its use was restricted to instances in which it 
was convenient that the genitive should precede 
the governing noun instead of following it. In 
this way there was developed a difference in 
meaning and emphasis between the inflected 
and the phrasal genitive, and the fact that 
modern English possesses both enables us to 
express shades of meaning which cannot be ren- 
dered with equal precision either in French or 
Latin. For example, if we substitute the ex- 
pression ' England's history ' for the more usual 
1 the history of England/ we indicate that the 
name of the country is used with some approach 
to personification. Even where the signification 
of the two forms is identical, there is a distinction 
of emphasis or feeling which it is not easy for a 
foreigner to apprehend. 

The rule that the genitive in 's must be 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 61 

followed immediately (or only with the inter- 
vention of an adjective, or an adjective qualified 
by an adverb) by the governing substantive, has 
given rise in modern English to the practice of 
treating the 's virtually as a separable word (a 
'postposition,' as we might call it), and attach- 
ing it to a whole descriptive phrase expressing a 
single idea, as in 'the Duke of Devonshire's 
estates.' Colloquially, this practice is sometimes 
carried to quite grotesque extremes. We hear 
occasionally such sentences as 'That was the 
man I met at Birmingham's idea.' Here the 
intonation of oral speech, which cannot be re- 
produced in writing, shows that the phrase 
' the-man-I-met-at-Birmingham ' is for the nonce 
converted into a word, which can take the in- 
flexional 's like any ordinary substantive. The 
' group-genitive,' as it is called, is a useful addi- 
tion to the resources of the language, as it is 
more direct and forcible than the synonymous 
form with of The need for a 'group-plural,' 
formed in a similar way, is sometimes felt. Such 
a formation is, for obvious reasons, inadmissible 
in writing, except in such simple cases as 'the 
Miss Smiths,' ' the two Dr. Johnsons ' ; but in con- 
versation it would be possible, without causing 
much surprise, to speak of 'a whole gallery of 



62 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

John the Baptists,' or (referring to tavern signs) 
of ' the innumerable King's Armses and Duke of 
Wellingtons.' 

A grammatical innovation, of somewhat ques- 
tionable value, which is due to French influence, 
is the polite substitution of the plural for the 
singular in the second person. The origin of this 
custom is to be found in the official Latin of the 
later Roman Empire, in which a great person of 
state was addressed with ' you ' instead of * thou,' 
just as, in formal documents, he wrote 'we,' in- 
stead of 'I.' The use of the plural 'you,' as a 
mark of respect, passed into all the Romanic 
languages, and from them into German, Dutch, 
and Scandinavian. It is a well-known fact that 
forms of politeness originally used only in address- 
ing superiors have in all languages a tendency 
to become more and more widely applied ; and 
hence in Europe generally the singular ' thou ' 
has, except in religious language and in diction 
more or less poetical, come to be used only in 
speaking to intimate friends or inferiors. In Eng- 
land, during the last two centuries, the use of 
thou, so far as ordinary language is concerned, has 
become obsolete ; it is only among the speakers 
of some northern dialects that it continues to be 
employed even by parents to their children, or by 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 63 

brothers and sisters to each other. Our language 
has thus lost whatever advantage it had gained 
by having a polite as well as a familiar form of 
address ; and unfortunately the form that has 
survived is ambiguous. There is a translation of 
the New Testament into modern English in 
which you is everywhere substituted for thou, 
except in addresses to the Deity. It is a signi- 
ficant fact that in one place the translator has 
felt obliged to inform his readers by a footnote 
that in the original the pronoun changes from the 
plural to the singular. The English language is, 
in respect of clearness, decidedly the worse for 
the change which has abolished the formal dis- 
tinction of number in the second person of the 
pronoun and the verb. 

One highly important feature of English gram- 
mar which has been developed since Old English 
days is what has been called the attributive use 
of the substantive, which may be exemplified by 
such expressions as ' a silk hat,' ' the London 
County Council,' 'the Shakspere Tercentenary,' 
' Church of England principles,' ' a House of Com- 
mons debate,' 'the Marriage Law Amendment 
Act,' 'the half-past two train,' 'the London, 
Brighton, and South Coast Railway,' 'the High- 
street front of the Town Hall,' 'my lawyer 



64 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

cousin.' No other European language has any- 
thing exactly parallel to this usage. In German, 
it is true, many of the English attributive com- 
binations could be rendered by compound nouns, 
which in that language may be formed very 
freely ; but others must be translated by substi- 
tuting an adjective for the attributive noun, and 
others again by a circumlocution of some kind. 
The difference between one of these English 
expressions and the German compound which 
corresponds to it is not merely that the latter 
is written as one word and the former is written 
with spaces between its parts. In speaking 
English we feel that the elements of such a 
combination are as much distinct words as are 
the adjective and the following substantive, or the 
genitive noun and the noun which governs it. 
The English noun used attributively might be 
described grammatically in various ways. We 
might say that the noun was in a case expressing 
a relation somewhat similar to that expressed by 
the genitive, but wider. Or we might say that it 
was a new part of speech, halfway between the 
substantive and the adjective. As English adjec- 
tives have no inflexions, there is no formal 
criterion by which we can distinguish an attri- 
butive substantive from an adjective ; and in fact 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 65 

many substantives, from being often used attri- 
butively, come to be really adjectives. The germ 
from which the attributive use of substantives 
has been developed is the compound noun. In 
Old English, as in German, Greek, and other 
languages, two substantives could be put together 
to form one word. The accent of the word was 
placed on the first element, which served to limit 
the sense of the second element to a special 
application. English has still many compounds 
of this sort, such as bookcase -, codch-kouse, wdterpot ; 
and indeed we can form new words of this kind 
very freely. Now very often it happens that the 
first element of such a combination has (as used 
in this position) a sense in which it is nearly 
equivalent to an adjective or to a noun in the 
genitive. In such cases the two elements of a 
compound came in Middle English 1 to be appre- 
hended as separate words, and each of them was 
pronounced with its independent accent. In this 
way it was that English grammar was enriched 
by the creation of the attributive noun. It 

1 It is difficult to fix the period at which this development began ; 
it would be a great mistake to suppose that when a combination of 
substantives is in Middle English written as two words that affords 
any proof that the two were not apprehended as forming a com- 
pound. In Middle English, as in Old English, a genuine compound 
was very often written with the parts separated. 

F 



66 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

often makes a noteworthy difference to the sense 
whether an attributive combination is taken as 
two words or as one. If we hear of ' the school- 
house' we think of a house which is used as a 
school ; on the other hand, '. the school house ' 
(with two accents) suggests a house which belongs 
to the school. The development of the attributive 
construction has greatly increased the flexibility 
and compactness of the language. As will be 
seen from some of the examples given above, we 
can use a whole complex phrase attributively as if 
it were a single substantive. 

Yet another means by which English has added 
to its resources of expression during the last 
thousand years is the extended use of auxiliaries 
in the conjugation of the verb. The Old English 
verb was very deficient in contrivances for in- 
dicating distinctions of tense. It had only two 
regular tenses, a present, which served also as 
future, and a past. A beginning had, however, 
been made towards supplementing this inadequate 
system by using certain verbs as auxiliaries, 
though these were employed only when the need 
for precise expression was especially urgent. If 
it was necessary unambiguously to designate an 
event as future, recourse was had to a figure of 
speech, much in the same way as a person who 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 67 

did not know how to form the future tense in 
some foreign tongue might say 'the sun is in 
debt to rise at six,' or 'coal intends to be cheaper.' 
The verbs which in Old English expressed the 
notion of debt or obligation and that of wish or 
intention were respectively sceal (our ' shall ') and 
wile (' will ') ; and the figurative use of these verbs 
resulted in their being employed as mere signs of 
the future tense. When it was desired to express, 
more definitely than could be done by the simple 
past tense, the sense of what we call the perfect 1 
or the pluperfect, the device employed was that 
of combining the present or past of the verb ' to 
have' with the passive participle. It is easy to 
see how this contrivance was suggested. If I say 
1 1 have a letter written,' where have is used in its 
primary sense, the sentence expresses the same 
fact as ' I have written a letter,' though it expresses 
something else in addition, viz., that the letter is 
still in my possession. From being used in cases 
of this kind, the combination of have with a 

1 The use of the perfect tense is to indicate that a fact relating to 
the past is viewed as an element in the present condition or character 
of the subject, or as a portion of a history that extends to the present 
moment. Thus we can say ' England has had many able rulers,' 
but if we substitute ' Assyria ' for ' England ' the tense must be 
changed. It is allowable to say 'Aristotle has treated this subject 
in his Ethics? just as we say 'Aristotle says so and so'; but we 
cannot say • Aristotle has written the Ethics? 



68 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

participle naturally came to serve as a mere com- 
pound tense, as in ' he haefth anne man ofslagenne? 
literally, 'he has a man killed.' Here the parti- 
ciple agrees like an adjective with the object 
noun, but in later Old English it was made in- 
declinable. The practice of putting the object 
after the participle did not become general till the 
fourteenth century. 

The perfect and pluperfect of intransitive verbs 
could be expressed in Old English by the verb 
to be and the participle, as we still do in sentences 
like ' Babylon is fallen,' ' the work is finished. ' 
The latter form is ambiguous in the modern 
language, but it was not so in Old English, 
because the present and past of the passive were 
expressed by the auxiliary zveorthan, literally ' to 
become ' (equivalent to the German werden), which 
in later English was unfortunately lost. 

In these auxiliary verbs Old English possessed 
an instrument of expression which admitted of 
being greatly developed. It was only necessary 
to conjugate each auxiliary through all its simple 
and compound tenses to produce a system capable 
of rendering almost every shade of meaning which 
is conveyed by the verbal inflexions of any 
language. The actual development, however, was 
gradual and slow ; the abundant material which 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 69 

lay ready to hand was brought into use by 
degrees, in response to the growing need for 
accuracy of expression which was produced by 
the increased use of the language for literary 
composition. We have not space to discuss in 
detail the history of the English system of verbal 
conjugation, but some few of its more remarkable 
features may be briefly pointed out. 

One point that is especially worthy of notice 
is that the development of the functions of the 
verbal forms, in the direction of increase of clear- 
ness, has continued till very recent times, many 
changes of great value having taken place during 
the last three centuries. 

We may consider in the first place the develop- 
ment of the auxiliary uses of the verb to be. 
Although the form ' I am speaking ' came into 
use very early in Middle English : (the correspond- 
ing form of the past tense having existed already 
in Old English), it was not till the seventeenth 
century was well advanced that it became the 
regular expression for the true present as dis- 
tinguished from the present of habit. Such a 
sentence as 'thy mother and thy sisters seek 
thee' was normal English when the Bible was 

1 There are one or two examples of it in Old English writings : 
eg. in iElfric's translation of Joshua x. 25. 



70 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

translated ; nowadays, in natural prose speech, we 
can only say ' are seeking.' The analogous passive 
forms, as in ' the house is being built,' ' he was 
being taught to ride,' were hardly known till near 
the end of the eighteenth century, and long 
afterwards they were condemned by sticklers for 
grammatical correctness. Yet the innovation was 
clearly needed: the older mode of speech, as in 

* the house is building,' or even the fuller form 
used in the seventeenth century, ' the house is 
a-building,' could not be employed in all contexts 
without inconvenience. In such expressions as ' I 
have been working hard,' ' it has often been said,' 

* if you were to do such a thing,' we have instances 
of the manner in which, by following out the 
analogy of older forms, the language has found 
means for representing shades of signification 
which had previously no accurate expression. 

Another auxiliary which has acquired its most 
important function in quite modern times is the 
verb to do. In Old English, it was already 
possible to say ' I do speak,' ' he did answer ' in- 
stead of the simple ' I speak,' ' he answered.' But 
down to the seventeenth century there is no very 
clear difference in meaning between the two forms. 
When, for instance, we read in the Bible of 1611, 
'and they did eat, and were all filled,' it is not 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 71 

easy to see any reason, except the very good one 
that it improves the rhythm of the sentence, why 
the verb should be ' did eat ' and not ' ate.' The 
words do and did, however, like any other auxiliary, 
admitted of being pronounced with strong stress, 
so as to emphasise the tense or the affirmative 
character of the sentence, or to give to the state- 
ment an exclamatory tone which intensifies the 
sense of the verb. This emphatic use of the 
auxiliary is obviously valuable, and it has gained 
in force and clearness from the fact that (during 
the last three centuries) the unemphatic do and 
did, in affirmative sentences, have become obsolete. 
In negative and interrogative sentences, on the 
other hand, the compound tenses formed with do 
and did have since Shakspere's time quite super- 
seded the simple present and past, except in the 
case of a very few verbs, such as do, have, 1 and 
be. We can no longer say, in plain prose, ' I 
went not away,' ' Heard you the voice?' The 

1 With regard to this verb there has been developed a convenient 
distinction in usage which seems to be in danger of being lost. 
The use of the auxiliary do is correct English only when have 
expresses something occasional or habitual, not when the object is 
a permanent possession or attribute. It is permissible to say ' Do 
you have breakfast at eight ? ' or ' We do not have many visitors ' ; 
but not ' Does she have blue eyes? ' or ' He did not have a good 
character.' Many American writers violate this rule, and the 
faulty use appears to be gaining ground in England. 



72 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

explanation of the change perhaps is that owing 
to the more frequent use of compound tenses it 
became unusual for the particle not or the subject 
of an interrogative sentence to follow any verb 
but an auxiliary, so that the instances in which 
this occurred were apt to sound unnatural. 

The history of shall and will is another illus- 
tration of the continuous struggle of language 
towards clearness of expression. Our future 
auxiliaries are not very well suited to their 
purpose, because their meaning, as we have 
already mentioned, includes something besides 
the idea of future time. Intrinsically, therefore, 
they are inferior to the colourless and unequivocal 
German auxiliary werden. When we wish to 
express simple futurity, we are obliged to choose 
between two forms, one of which implies obliga- 
tion, and the other will or intention. For many 
centuries the language was feeling its way to a 
rule for the employment of these forms, such 
that their excess of meaning should occasion 
the smallest amount of ambiguity. It is only 
in recent times that the problem has been solved : 
as is well known, the English Bible often has 
shall where we now feel that will would be 
more appropriate. The present rule, though 
Scotchmen and Irishmen still find it difficult to 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 73 

master, rests on a very intelligible principle. 
Future events are divided into two classes, those 
which depend on the present volition of the 
speaker, and those which do not. In the former 
case we say ' I will,' and ' you or he shall ' ; in 
the latter case we say * I shall,' and * you or he 
will.' There are many exceptions, each with its 
own special reason; but in the main the rule 
is correct. Some ambiguity in the use of will 
still remains possible, because such a statement 
as ' he will do it ' may either express mere 
futurity or may mean that the person is deter- 
mined to act in the manner indicated. The 
sense of shall, however, has become quite un- 
equivocal, and perhaps we may say that the 
language has at length succeeded in making 
the best possible use of its inherited means of 
expressing future time. 

Much more might be said respecting the 
gradual enrichment of the English verbal con- 
jugation. Owing very largely to the develop- 
ments of the last three centuries, modern English 
is able to render with perfect precision almost 
every distinction in thought which is expressed 
by the modification of the verb in any language. 
It may, however, be remarked that the increased 
precision of modern English, though it is a great 



74 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

gain for the purposes of matter-of-fact statement, 
is sometimes the reverse of an advantage for the 
language of emotion and contemplation. Hence 
we find that our poetry, and our higher literature 
in general, often returns to the less developed 
grammar of the Elizabethan age. 



§ 3. Profit and Loss. 

In the foregoing pages we have described, and 
tried to account for, the more important of the 
changes in the grammatical structure of English 
that have taken place since the days of King 
Alfred. We have now to ask how far the results 
of these changes have been good, and how far 
they have been evil, in their influence on the 
efficiency of the language as an instrument of 
expression. 

It has been maintained by some scholars that 
in the evolution of language everything happens 
for the best, and that English in particular has 
lost nothing, at least so far as its grammar is 
concerned, that would have been worth keeping. 
But this extreme optimistic view can hardly be 
sustained. There can be no doubt that in 
writing modern English special care and in- 
genuity are often required to avoid falling into 



II.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 75 

ambiguities. Every unpractised writer of English 
frequently finds it necessary to alter a sentence 
which accurately expresses his meaning, because 
he perceives that the reader might for a moment 
be in doubt whether a particular word should 
be taken as a noun or a verb, or whether, if it 
is a verb, it is meant for the infinitive or the 
present tense. And if we venture on those 
inversions of the normal order of words which 
when skilfully used contribute so much to force 
and beauty of expression, we have further to 
take care that the subject of the sentence is 
not mistaken for the object. Much of our 
poetry is obscure on a first reading, not because 
the diction is affected or allusive, but because 
the structure of the language has compelled the 
poet to choose between the claims of lucidity 
and those of emphasis or grace. There are 
passages in many English poets which are 
puzzling even to native readers, but which if 
rendered literally into Latin or German would 
appear quite simple and straightforward. Of 
course it is possible to write as lucidly in English 
as in any other language ; but in order to do 
so we must use constant watchfulness, and must 
sometimes reject the most obvious form of ex- 
pression for one that is more artificial. In 



76 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

colloquial English, again, there are some abbre- 
viations which sometimes occasion inconvenience 
by their doubtful meaning : thus lies may be either 
1 he is ' or ' he has,' and I'd may be either ' I had ' 
or ' I would.' It is true that no known language 
is so perfect as not to have its own liability to 
ambiguity 1 ; and in this respect Old English was 
already greatly inferior to Greek or even to Latin. 
Still, when the fullest allowance is made for this 
fact, it remains unquestionable that the loss of the 
Old English inflexions has not been unattended 
with disadvantage. 

On the other hand, modern English, viewed 
with reference to its grammar, has certain merits 
in which it is scarcely rivalled by any other 
tongue. We have already pointed out the great 
value of some of the additions which the language 
has made to its grammatical resources during the 
last thousand years. But it is not merely by 
the acquisition of new machinery that English 
has gained in efficiency as a means of expression. 
The disappearance of superfluous inflexions, and 
the reduction of those which remain to mere con- 
sonantal suffixes which in most instances do not 

1 For instance, in Latin (partly on account of the impairment 
of its inflectional system through phonetic change) there is an extra- 
ordinary abundance of forms which, apart from their context, would 
admit of two or more different interpretations. 



it] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 77 

add a syllable, have greatly increased the capacity 
of the language for vigorous condensation. There 
are very few languages in which it is possible, 
as it is in English, to write whole pages almost 
exclusively in words of one syllable.. Of course 
we are not compelled to do this : our language 
is quite as capable as any other of the variety 
of rhythm which is imparted by the use of 
words of differing length. But we cannot read 
any of our modern poets without seeing how 
much of force and impressiveness is often gained 
by the absence of syllables which denote mere 
grammatical relations that are irrelevant to the 
intended emotional effect. In modern English 
the grammar does not, as it does in purely in- 
flexional languages, 1 obtrude itself on the atten- 
tion where it is not wanted. 

While English has thus the peculiar advantage 
of a noiseless grammatical machinery, it has 
another advantage of an opposite kind in its 
power of emphasising certain grammatical rela- 
tions by placing the sentence-accent on the 
auxiliary. It is usually difficult to render in 

lAs a somewhat extreme instance, we may cite the Latin 
duorum bonorum virorum, where the main portions of the words, 
du-, ban-, and vir-, are actually unaccented, the stress falling on 
the endings which tautologically express three times over the 
notion of the genitive plural. 



78 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

another language the precise effect of the stressed 
auxiliary in such phrases as ' I did live there,' 
or * if he should do such a thing/ The exten- 
sive use which is made of variation in sentence- 
accent for expressing distinctions of meaning gives 
a large scope for that elliptic brevity which is so 
striking a characteristic of spoken English. One 
remarkable example of the national love of con- 
ciseness of speech is our habit of omitting the 
principal verb in compound tenses where it can 
be supplied by the hearer from what has gone 
before, as in 'Yes, I do,' 'it certainly will not.' 
By means of this idiom we can under certain 
circumstances substitute a monosyllable for any 
tense of any verb. 

The ' making of English grammar ' is now pro- 
bably a finished process. While it is certain that 
the vocabulary of English will in future undergo 
great changes — while many new words will be 
formed or adopted, and many old words will 
disappear or change their meaning — there is 
reason for believing that the grammar will re- 
main for centuries very nearly what it is now. 
The ground for this belief lies partly in the 
spread of education. Literary culture perhaps on 
the whole conduces to tolerance of certain kinds 
of innovation in vocabulary, but with regard to 



ii.] THE MAKING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR 79 

grammar its tendency is strongly conservative. 
Another reason is that simplification of accidence 
has nearly attained its utmost conceivable limit, 
and that the few further steps in this direction 
that remain possible would involve practical in- 
convenience. For instance, our irregular verbs and 
irregular plurals of nouns are, as we have seen, 
for the most part shorter or more easily pro- 
nounceable than the regular inflexions that might 
be substituted. Perhaps if the influence of edu- 
cation did not stand in the way, the language 
might lose the distinctive s of the third person 
singular of the present tense, which is dropped 
in some forms of vulgar speech ; but as things 
are this is very unlikely to happen. We can- 
not assert that the evolution of new grammati- 
cal material — for instance, of new auxiliary verbs 
— is altogether impossible, but the modern con- 
servative instinct would render the acceptance of 
such novelties very difficult. On the whole, it 
is probable that the history of English grammar 
will for a very long time have few changes to 
record later than the nineteenth century. 



CHAPTER III. 

WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES. 

The changes in grammatical structure, which 
were the subject of the preceding chapters, are 
only a part of the changes by which Old English 
has been transformed into Modern English. The 
changes in vocabulary are equally important. 
Although we still use many of the old words — 
chiefly, it is true, very much altered in pronun- 
ciation and spelling — yet a very considerable 
proportion of them have become obsolete; and 
many thousands of new words have been intro- 
duced. Of those new words which have been 
formed in English itself we shall have to speak 
later; in the present chapter we shall treat of 
those which have been adopted from foreign 
languages. 

The adoption of foreign words into the English 
language began before the English came to this 

80 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 81 

island. The Germanic people, of which the 
Angles and Saxons formed part, had long before 
this event been in contact with the civilisation 
of Rome; and several Latin words, denoting 
objects belonging to that civilisation, or foreign 
articles of use or luxury, had already found their 
way into the language of all or many of the 
Germanic nations. The Latin strata, a paved 
road, survives in English as street, and in Ger- 
man as strasse. Other words of Latin origin, 
which were learnt by the English people while 
still dwelling on the continent, and which remain 
in the modern language, are wine, butter, pepper, 
cheese, silk, alum, pound, inch, mile, mint (from 
Latin moueta, money). 

When the English were settled in Britain, 
they learned a few more Latin words from the 
Romanised people of the towns. The Latin 
castra, for instance, became, under the form 
ceaster, the Old English word for a Roman 
fortified town, and it survives in the place-name 
Chester, and in the ending of many other names 
such as Winchester, Doncaster, Leicester, and 
Exeter. 

In the sixth and seventh centuries, the people 
of England were converted to Roman Christianity, 
and one of the results of their conversion was that 



82 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

they adopted a considerable number of Latin 
words, chiefly signifying things connected with 
religion or the services of the church. Among 
those which are still part of the language are 
bishop, candle, creed, font, mass, monk, priest. 
Altogether, there have been counted about four 
hundred Latin words which had become English 
before the Norman Conquest ; but many of these 
were not at all in common use, and only a few 
of them survive in modern English. 

It might, perhaps, be naturally expected that 
Old English would contain many words taken 
from the language of the Celtic Britons. The 
older books on English philology contain a long 
list of words supposed to be derived from this 
source. Modern investigation, however, has shown 
that the number of Celtic words which are found 
in English before the twelfth century is less than 
a dozen ; and of these several (such as dry, a 
wizard, the same word as druid, bratt, a cloak, 
luh, an arm of the sea, a lough) appear from their 
form to have been learnt not from the Britons, 
but from the Irishmen who accompanied the 
missionaries from Iona to Northumbria ; while 
dun, a hill, a ' down,' though of Celtic origin, was 
probably brought by the English from the con- 
tinent. Perhaps binn, a manger, and dunn, dun 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 83 

(-coloured), and one or two more words, may really 
have been adopted from the British language, but 
these are all the Old English words for which 
this origin is at all probable. It must be con- 
fessed that this result is somewhat puzzling, as 
there is evidence to prove that the British 
population was not entirely massacred or driven 
westward by the English conquerors. The phys- 
ical characteristics of modern Englishmen in 
many parts of the country show that they must 
be partly descended from the pre-English in- 
habitants ; and in Old English writings wealh, 
Welshman, was one of the ordinary words for 
'slave.' It must be remarked, also, that the 
British names of rivers and of cities have in many 
cases been preserved to modern times. Still, 
however surprising the fact may be, it remains 
certain that the English language owes practically 
nothing to the language of the ancient Britons. 

To the Danes and Northmen the English 
vocabulary owes a great deal. If we did not 
otherwise know that England had once been 
under Scandinavian rule, we might have inferred 
the fact from the presence in our language of 
many Danish words with what may be called 
political meanings, such as law, outlaw, grith 
(legal security), hustings, wapentake, riding (in 



84 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

1 the three Ridings of Yorkshire ' — the Old Norse 
thrithjungr, third part). The Old English word 
eorl (earl), which originally meant merely a man 
of noble birth, came to be used in its Scandi- 
navian sense of ruler of a district. Other words 
of Scandinavian origin are awe, call, crave, fellow, 
get, hit, husband, knife, leg, loft, loose, low, odd, 
root, same, scant, skin, script, take, Thursday, thrall, 
want, wrong. The word cross of course comes 
ultimately from Latin, but its form is due to the 
Northmen, who had learnt it from the Christians 
of Ireland. Some of our common words, which 
existed in Old English, have been assimilated to 
the kindred Scandinavian synonyms : thus sister 
descends not from the Old English sweostor, but 
from the Old Norse syster; and the Middle 
English yive or yeve (which regularly repre- 
sented the Old English gifan 1 ) has been super- 
seded by the form give (Old Norse, gifa). In 
the dialects of the North of England, of East 
Anglia, and of some of the midland counties, 
there are scores of words of Danish origin. 

We have now seen how far the English lan- 
guage had been enriched from foreign tongues 

1 The Old English g before i and e was pronounced as y, and 
is represented by y in modern English. 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 85 

before the end of the eleventh century. After all, 
the amount of what it had gained in this way was 
not very great in comparison with the whole 
extent of its vocabulary. With all the Latin, 
Celtic, and Scandinavian words that it had ac- 
quired, the general character of the language in 
1 100 was essentially what it had been five 
centuries before. 

The new conditions brought about by the 
Norman Conquest, however, opened the door for 
a far more abundant influx of foreign words. It 
was not only that the tongue of the new rulers, as 
we have already seen, came to be used by large 
numbers of Englishmen in the intercourse of daily 
life, so that much of its colloquial vocabulary was 
adopted into the native language. The know- 
ledge of French gave access to the rich literature 
of the continent; from the thirteenth to the 
fifteenth century a large portion of the literature 
of England consisted of translations of French 
romance, and the native poetry was powerfully 
influenced by French models. Under these 
circumstances it was natural that the English 
literary dialect should receive a large accession 
of French words, many of which gradually 
found their way into the vocabulary of familiar 
speech. 



86 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

There was yet another way in which the 
Norman Conquest contributed to the transforma- 
tion of English from a purely Germanic language 
to one with a mixed vocabulary. The higher 
literary culture of the foreign clergy, who under 
Norman and Angevin rule were introduced into 
the English monasteries, soon made itself felt in 
the extended use of Latin for works of history 
and theology. In process of time many Latin 
chronicles and books of devotion were translated 
into English, and the translators, writing for 
readers who were not altogether without learning, 
often found it easier to adopt words from the 
learned language than to render them by native 
equivalents. 

It is important to understand that the French 
words which were brought into English represent 
two different dialects. The form of the French 
language which obtained currency in England as 
the immediate consequence of the Norman Con- 
quest was the northern dialect — the speech of 
Normandy and Picardy. But with the accession 
of the Angevin dynasty in the middle of the 
twelfth century the dialect of Central France 
became the language of the court and of fashion- 
able society. The two dialects differed consider- 
ably in pronunciation : for instance, Northern 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 87 

French had k where Central French had ch, and 
ch where Central French had s; in words of 
Germanic and Celtic etymology the original w 
remained unaltered, while in Central French it 
became £7/, and ultimately £- ; and in many words 
where Northern French had g the Central dialect 
changed it into j. One consequence of the two- 
fold character of the French spoken in England 
was that very often one and the same Fren< 
word was adopted into English twice over, in two 
different forms and with meanings more or less 
different. Thus we have in modern English the 
words catch y warden, launch, wage, which came 
from Norman French, and alongside them we 
have chase, guardian, lance, gage, which represent 
the same words as pronounced in the French 
dialect afterwards introduced. In this way the 
dialectal diversities in the language of the con- 
querors have contributed to increase the copious- 
ness of the English vocabulary. There are a few 
cases in which a word was at first made English in 
its Norman form, and afterwards assimilated to the 
pronunciation of Central French : thus ' charity ' 
was cariteth in the English of about 1150, but a 
century later it appears as charitee. It may be 
mentioned as a curious fact, that while the 
spelling gaol is derived from Northern French, 



88 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the word is always pronounced and sometimes 
written (jail) with the j which is a mark of the 
Central dialect. 

It is interesting and instructive to observe what 
kinds of objects or ideas are chiefly denoted by 
the words that came in from French during 
the two centuries that followed the Conquest. 
Readers of Ivanhoe will remember the acute 
remark which Scott puts into the mouth of 
Wamba the jester, that while the living animals 
— ox, sheep, calf , swine, deer — continued to bear 
their native names, the flesh of those animals as 
used for food was denoted by French words, 
beef, mutton, veal, pork, bacon, venison. The point 
of the thing is, of course, that the ' Saxon ' serf 
had the care of the animals when alive, but when 
killed they were eaten by his ' French ' superiors. 
We may perhaps find a similar significance 
in the French origin of master, servant, butler, 
buttery, bottle, dinner, supper, banquet. It is only 
what we should have expected that we find 
French words abundant among our terms relating 
to law, government, and property. Examples are 
court, assize, judge, jury, justice, prison, gaol, par- 
liament, bill, act, council, tax, custom, royal, prince, 
county, city, mayor, manor, chattel, money, rent, all 
words that came in before the end of the thirteenth 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 89 

century. The system of gradation of titular rank 
was of continental origin, and the individual titles 
are mostly French, as duke, marquis, viscount, 
baron. There is one notable exception ; the 
foreign conte (count) was not adopted, because 
the native earl had come to have nearly the 
same meaning; but it had not been the English 
custom to give to ladies titles corresponding to 
those of their lords, and hence for the wife of an 
earl the French countess had to be used. The 
Old English word cniht (knight) kept its place, 
possibly because it was shorter than the French 
synonym chevaler. 

It was natural, too, that many of the terms 
relating to military matters should be adopted 
from the tongue of the conquerors. War itself 
is a Norman French word, and among the other 
French words belonging to the same department 
which became English before the end of the 
thirteenth century are battle, assault, siege, standard, 
banner, gonfanon, arms, armour, harness, glaive, 
lance, arbalast, hauberk, mangonel, fortress, tozver. 

In industrial civilisation the French-speaking 
strangers were no doubt greatly superior to the 
native population, and it is probably for this 
reason that nearly all the commonest designations 
of classes of tradesmen and artisans are of French 



90 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

origin. The smith, the baker, the skinner, and a 
few more, kept their Old English titles; but the 
butcher, the barber, the chandler, the carpenter, 
the cutler, the draper, the grocer, the mason, the 
tailor, are all called by French names. The 
shoemaker is an exception, but there was a time 
when he preferred to call himself a cordwainer or 
a corviser. 

It is curious to note that all the current terms 
of family relationship outside the immediate circle 
of the household have been adopted from French. 
Uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, and cousin very soon 
displaced their native equivalents. Grandsire and 
grandame, which appear in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, are words taken directly from the French 
spoken in England. They do not appear to 
have been used on the continent; and indeed 
the substitution of the respectful titles sire (the 
same word as sir) and dame for ' father ' and 
* mother ' appears to have been peculiar to the 
French of England. In the fifteenth century the 
half-English grandfather and grandmother came 
into use ; but it was not until the Elizabethan 
times that the use of the prefix was extended 
(in a manner unknown to French) by the forma- 
tion of words like grandson and granddaughter. 
Father-in-law, mother-in-law, etc., are formed of 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 91 

English elements, but they are literal translations 
of Old French designations. The words sire and 
dame (now dam), which, as we have just seen, 
were originally applied to parents as terms of 
respect, have suffered a strange descent in dignity 
of use, being now employed (except for the poetic 
use of sire) only with reference to animals. 

The only definite class of objects for which 
the native names have remained without any 
French mixture (so far as colloquial use is con- 
cerned) is that consisting of the external parts 
of the body. Even here there is one noteworthy 
exception. The French word face, which first 
appears as English late in the thirteenth century, 
found admission into the vocabulary of familiar 
speech, perhaps all the more readily because it 
was shorter or more easily pronounced than the 
native synonyms, onlete, onsene, and wlite. 

The literary, as distinguished from the col- 
loquial, adoption of French words, began in the 
twelfth century, and has continued down to the 
present time. The English writers of the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth centuries were able to 
assume on the part of their readers at least a 
moderate acquaintance with literary French. 
Hence they felt themselves at liberty to introduce 
a French word whenever they pleased. The 



92 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

poets availed themselves of this liberty very 
freely; it was an easy resource for meeting the 
necessities of rhyme and metre, and especially 
the very exacting demands of the laws of allitera- 
tive verse. The innumerable words brought into 
the language in this way are naturally of the 
most varied character with regard to meaning. 
Many of them, which supplied no permanent 
need of the language, have long been obsolete, 
but the greater number still survive. The French 
importations by prose writers during this period 
are less abundant, and consist largely of terms 
of science and theology, in which the native 
language was poor. 

The French literary vocabulary, from an early 
period, contained a very large proportion of 
learned words taken from Latin, with the endings 
dropped or altered in accordance with the habits 
of French pronunciation. Words of this kind, 
when adopted into English, served as a pattern 
after which Latin words could be anglicised. 
An English writer who introduced a Latin word 
into his composition usually gave it the same 
form in which it would have been adopted into 
French. It is therefore often difficult or im- 
possible to determine whether an English word 
of Latin origin came into English immediately 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 93 

from Latin or through the medium of French. 
Even when we have proved that the word was 
used earlier in French than in English, the 
question is not settled, because it may have 
been independently borrowed in the two lan- 
guages; indeed, it is certain that this often did 
happen. 

The custom of adopting Latin words at second- 
hand — through French — paved the way to the 
extensive introduction of words directly from 
Latin. This is the reason why the Latin 
element is so very much larger in the English 
vocabulary than in that of any other Germanic 
language — German, Dutch, or Scandinavian. 
Germany and Holland have certainly not been 
less, but probably much more, devoted to classical 
scholarship than England has ; but their lan- 
guages were not, in their middle stages, saturated 
with French loan-words, and consequently they 
were led to find expression for new ideas by 
development of their native resources, instead of 
drawing on the stores of the Latin vocabulary. 

The Latin element in modern English is so 
great that there would be no difficulty in writing 
hundreds of consecutive pages in which the pro- 
portion of words of native English and French 
etymology, excluding particles, pronouns, and 



94 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

auxiliary and substantive verbs, would not exceed 
five per cent, of the whole. 1 What would be the 
result of an etymological census of all the words 
in a complete modern dictionary it is impossible 
to say, because the laborious and unprofitable task 
has never been performed; but it is probable 
that, if compounds and derivatives of English 
formation were left out of account, the words 
taken from Latin would far outnumber those 
from all other sources. And the Latin portion 
of the vocabulary is still constantly receiving 
additions. The greater part of modern English 
literature has been written by men who were 
classically educated, and for readers who were 
presumed to have more or less knowledge of 
Latin. Probably there are very few of our 
scholarly writers who are not responsible for the 
introduction of some new word of Latin deri- 
vation. It has come to be felt that the whole 
Latin vocabulary, or at least that portion of it 
which is represented in familiar classical passages, 
is potentially English, and when a new word is 
wanted it is often easier, and more in accord- 

1 In this statement it is assumed that all the words of Latin 
origin which conform to the accepted rules for anglicising Latin 
words are to be counted as Latin and not as French, even 
though as a matter of history they may have been adopted 
through French. 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 95 

ance with our literary habits, to anglicise a 
Latin word, or to form a compound from Latin 
elements, than to invent a native English com- 
pound or derivative which will answer the pur- 
pose. So much is this the case, that probably 
the authors of many of these coinages would be 
greatly surprised to learn that the words had 
never been used before, or even that they were 
not to be found in the ordinary dictionaries. 
And the classically-educated reader, when he 
meets with a word of Latin etymology which 
he at once recognises as a good and useful ex- 
pression of a certain meaning, does not ordin- 
arily note that he has not been accustomed to 
meet with it in English. Our literary vocabu- 
lary abounds with words which owe their mental 
effect not to any English traditions, but to the 
reader's knowledge of the Latin etymology. 
Sometimes, even, a word depends for its pre- 
cise force on its suggestion of a particular classi- 
cal passage. For example the adjective esurient ', 
which literally means only ' hungry,' is often 
used with an implication which is intelligible 
only to readers who remember the Graeculus 
esuriens of Juvenal — the 'hungry Greekling' 
who will shrink from no task that will bring 
him a little money. 



96 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

The English method of adopting Latin words 
is in some respects peculiar. While in French, as 
a general rule, Latin adjectives are adopted by 
simply dropping the inflexional ending of the 
accusative, there is in English a curious aversion 
to doing this except in the case of words having 
distinctly adjectival endings. In other cases we 
ordinarily append a suffix, ultimately of Latin 
origin, either -ous, -al, or -an. This practice 
began in French, but in English it has been ex- 
tended much farther. The Latin continuum, 
caelestem, erroneum, which in French have become 
continu, celeste, errone, are in English continuous, 
celestial, erroneous ; the Latin veracem becomes 
veracious (not verace)\ and caeruleus becomes 
cerulean. A Latin adjective anglicised, as sub- 
stantives usually are, by merely leaving out the 
ending, would strike every one as un-English, 
unless it had one of the familiar endings of 
adjectives. In the anglicising of Latin verbs, one 
usual mode is that of dropping the inflexions 
of the present indicative ; but where the verb 
has a short root syllable this mostly results in 
the production of forms which somehow are felt 
to be unsatisfactory. If the verb dtvido had not 
become English at an early period, no one would 
now think of adopting it in the form divide. In 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 97 

many instances of this kind we can fall back 
on the old practice of forming the English verb 
from the passive participle, as in revise, direct, 
inspect, meditate, expedite ; but where the participle 
happens to end in -itus this resource is not in 
accordance with modern custom. Hence the 
general statement that any Latin word may 
be adopted into English if it supplies a want is 
in practice limited by the fact that there are 
many verbs (such as destpio, for instance) which 
do not admit of being anglicised according to 
the recognised methods. 

The revival of Greek learning in Western 
Europe, the effects of which began to be felt in 
this country soon after the commencement of the 
sixteenth century, opened up a new source from 
which the English vocabulary could be enriched. 
Long before this time the language contained a 
certain number of Greek words, such as geography, 
theology, logic, which had come in through the 
medium of Latin. In most cases the immediate 
source was French ; and nearly all these latinised 
Greek words had been adopted into all the liter- 
ary languages of Europe. In the sixteenth and 
to a great extent in the seventeenth century Latin 
was still the ordinary vehicle of the literature of 



98 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

science and philosophy, and the new technical 
terms of Greek etymology were generally 
used in modern Latin before they found their 
way into the vernacular tongues. It therefore 
became a general European convention that when 
a new word was adopted from Greek into English 
or any other modern language, it must be treated 
as if it had passed through a Latin channel. The 
Greek k, ai, ei, oi, ou, u, were transliterated, after 
Latin example, by c, ce> i, oe, u, y, and the aspirated 
initial r by rh. In the main, these rules are still 
adhered to, though there are some exceptions 
among modern scientific words. Greek adjectives, 
it may be remarked, are usually anglicised, like 
Latin adjectives, by the addition of the suffix -ous, 
-an, or -al\ thus autono7nos, diaphanes, are repre- 
sented by autonomous, diaphanous. 

Although the study of Greek has been for cen- 
turies an essential part of the higher education of 
Englishmen, the language would not have contri- 
buted very greatly to the English vocabulary, if 
it had not happened to be peculiarly well fitted 
to supply the need for precise technical terms of 
science. It possesses an unlimited power of form- 
ing compound words, and it has also a singularly 
complete and regular system of suffixes, by means 
of which a whole group of derivatives of obvious 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 99 

and precise meaning can be produced from any 
verb or noun. Thus the verb seted, I inquire, 
has the derivatives, zetema, an object of inquiry, 
zetesis, the process of inquiry, zetetes, an inquirer, 
zetetikos, able or disposed to inquire; and the 
meaning of all these words is obvious when 
that of the primary verb is known. In the 
hands of the long succession of thinkers which 
culminated in Plato and Aristotle, the capacities 
of the language for the expression of accurate 
distinctions had been cultivated to the highest 
point. In all the departments of science that 
were known to the ancient world, the Greek 
technical vocabulary is marvellous in its lucidity 
and precision. It is therefore not wonderful that 
the greater part of it has been adopted into all 
the modern European languages. So well adapted 
is the structure of the Greek language for the 
formation of scientific terms, that when a word 
is wanted to denote some conception peculiar to 
modern science, the most convenient way of 
obtaining it usually is to frame a new Greek 
compound or derivative, such as Aristotle himself 
might have framed if he had found it needful to 
express the meaning. 

The wonderful development of the physical 
sciences during the last two hundred years has 
' LofC. 



ioo THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

created a necessity for the invention of a multi- 
tude of new terms ; and hence an etymological 
census of the words in our recent large dictionaries 
would show a surprisingly 1 great proportion of 
Greek derivatives — a proportion which is con- 
stantly increasing. In addition to the scientific 
terms the recently-coined words of Greek ety- 
mology include many names of processes or 
instruments of modern invention, such as photog- 
raphy, lithography, ophthalmoscope, stereotype, tele- 
phone, cinematograph. It is to be noted that the 
modern scientific and technical words from this 
source are mostly of international currency. The 
custom of forming compounds from Greek ele- 
ments prevails in all civilised countries of Europe 
and America, and if a useful term of this kind 
is introduced in any one country — whether in 
England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, or 
Spain — it is usually adopted with great prompti- 
tude into the languages of all the rest. 

Nearly all the words that English owes to the 
Greek language, indirectly as well as directly, were 
originally scientific or technical, though many of 
those of older date (adopted through mediaeval 

1 At least if our anticipations are based on knowledge of the 
etymological composition of the vocabulary of everyday speech, 
or even of that of ordinary literature. 






in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 101 

Latin and French), such as fancy, idea, ecstasy, 
pathos, sympathy, have long taken their place in 
the popular vocabulary. Now and then, though 
not very often, a Greek word of other than tech- 
nical character is employed in anglicised form in 
order to evoke in the reader's mind a recollection 
of its use by some classic author. The use of 
such a word as apolaustic, for example, implies 
that the -writer who uses it is addressing readers 
who are able to understand an allusion to the 
Ethics of Aristotle. There are, too, a few Greek 
words, such as kudos, nous, hubris, which have 
been adopted, without the customary latinisation 
of form, in university slang, and have thence 
acquired a certain degree of general currency. 

During the four centuries that have elapsed 
since 1500, the intercourse between England and 
the remoter nations of Europe has become more 
extensive and intimate than in earlier times, and 
the literatures of those nations, made accessible 
through the printing press, have come to be 
studied in this country. At the same time, the 
progress of discovery and colonisation, in which 
England has borne so great a part, has made 
known to our countrymen the languages, customs, 
and products of the most distant regions of the 



102 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

earth. Hence it has come to pass that the 
modern English vocabulary includes words derived 
from every civilised language of Europe, and from 
innumerable languages of Asia, Africa, America, 
and Australia. 

A great deal of history is enshrined in the 
many words that English has adopted from other 
tongues. The presence in our dictionaries of 
such terms as aria, basso, cantabile, da capo, 
fantasia, finale, gamut, intermezzo, legato, maestoso, 
oboe, opera, piano, pizzicato, prima donna, rallentando, 
staccato, tremolo, and aquatinta, busto, chiaroscuro, 
dado, facciata, fresco, graffito, impasto, intaglio, 
mezzotint, morbidezza, ovolo, rilievo, replica, studio, 
terra cotta (to mention only a few out of many) 
would be sufficient to inform us, if we did not 
know already, that the Italians have been our 
teachers in music and the fine arts. Less generally 
known are the obligations of English artistic 
culture to the Netherlands, which are shown by 
such words as landscape, sketch, easel, and maul- 
stick. That the Dutch were once our masters in 
nautical matters may be learned from the terms 
aloof, avast, boom, dock, hull, skipper, orlop, fly boat, 
euphroe, rover, and many others. There was a 
period when the ' Englishman Italianate,' whom 
Ascham so much detested, was a personage very 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 103 

commonly met with, and when Italy set the 
fashion for England in literary taste as well as 
in dress and social customs ; there was another 
period in which the Spaniards Gongora and 
Guevara were looked on as the writers most 
deserving of admiring imitation. It is therefore 
not wonderful that the English of the books 
written during these periods contains many words 
adopted from Italian and Spanish. Some of these 
did not take root in the language, but others are 
still in current use, as attitude, cicerone, fiasco, 
influenza, isolate, motto, stanza, umbrella, from 
Italian, and ambuscade, desperado, disembogue, dis- 
patch, grandee, negro, peccadillo, punctilio, renegade, 
from Spanish. Amongst the very few words that 
English owes to High German are bismuth, blende, 
cobalt, gneiss, greywacke, quartz, shale, zinc, which 
remind us that it was in Germany that mineralogy 
first attained the rank of a science. 

The English words taken from the other lan- 
guages of Europe, and from languages of more 
distant parts of the world, are chiefly names of 
foreign products, or terms connected with the 
customs of foreign peoples. From Portuguese we 
have auto-da-fe, albatross, cocoa, dodo, verandah; 
from modern Greek, valonia ; from Russian, 
drosky, knout, verst, steppe ; from Turkish, caftan, 



104 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

coffee, effendi, horde; from modern Scandinavian 
tongues, eider, geysir, kraken, sloyd, tungsten. The 
many languages of our Indian Empire are abun- 
dantly represented in, our English dictionaries. 
The number of Malay words in English is sur- 
prisingly large, and though most of them are 
probably known to few people, the list includes 
the familiar gingham, gong, gutta-percha, lory, 
orang-outan, amuck, ketchup. China has given us 
tea, and the names of the various kinds of tea ; a 
good many other Chinese words figure in our 
larger dictionaries, though they cannot be said to 
have become really English. From Japan, besides 
the terms relating to the art and the institutions 
of that country, we have rickshaw, which seems 
likely to become naturalised in an application un- 
known in its native land. The Polynesian dialects 
yield two words that are in everyday use, taboo 
and tattoo. The languages of the New World 
have contributed some hundreds of words ; and 
although many of these, such as squaw and wig- 
wam, are used only in speaking of the peoples to 
whose tongues they belong, there are not a few 
(e.g. tobacco, potato, toboggan, moccasin, pemmican) 
which we never think of regarding as foreign. 

The increase of the English vocabulary by 
additions from foreign sources has been so 



Hi.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 105 

enormous that the words of native etymology 
bear a very small proportion to the whole num- 
ber of words given in our modern dictionaries. 
It is true that not a quarter of the words in the 
dictionaries are really familiar to the mass of 
well-educated readers. But even if we take the 
actual vocabulary of modern novels or newspaper 
articles, it still remains true that the words of 
Old English origin are far outnumbered by those 
derived from other tongues. 

It has often been contended that the influx 
of foreign words into English has enfeebled 
instead of strengthening the language, and that 
it would have been better if, instead of taking 
over words from French and Latin, our country- 
men had, like the Germans, supplied the 
need for new words by forming compounds and 
derivatives from the words belonging to the 
native stock. The advocates of this view 
have, no doubt, some facts on their side. It is 
a real defect in English that such words as 
mind and mental, eye and ocular, sun and solar, 
moon and lunar, bone and ossify, have no formal 
relation corresponding to their relation in mean- 
ing. And we shall see in a subsequent chapter 
(p. 119) that our language has suffered some 



106 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

injury in the partial loss of its capacity for 
forming compound words. On the whole, how- 
ever, the effect of the etymological diversity of 
the vocabulary has been to provide the language 
with an unequalled profusion of approximate 
synonyms expressing subtle shades of difference 
in meaning and in tone of feeling. The dis- 
tinction between such pairs of words as paternal 
and fatherly, fraternity and brotherhood, celestial 
and heavenly, fortune and luck, felicity and 
happiness, royal and kingly, is very real to an 
Englishman who knows his own language, but 
is not easy to render in any other tongue. 

It is true, as a general rule, that when there 
are two words expressing approximately the same 
notion, one of them being of native and the 
other of French or Latin etymology, the native 
word is the one that has the fuller emphasis, 
and the greater richness of emotional suggestion. 
This fact, however, by no means justifies the 
rule which some writers have laid down and 
tried to carry out in practice, that * Anglo-Saxon ' 
words should be substituted for those of Latin 
etymology wherever it is possible to do so. 
Over-emphasis, force of diction in excess of the 
strength of the feeling that is to be rendered, 
is a falsity in style no less blameworthy than 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 107 

the opposite vice of inadequate expression. It 
must be remembered, also, that the peculiar 
depth of meaning of our native English words 
is largely due to the existence of the less vigor- 
ous synonyms of Latin origin, which enables us 
to reserve the nobler words for noble uses. If 
we accustom ourselves to use strong words where 
no emphasis is needed, and words fraught with 
beautiful suggestion when our matter is trivial, 
we shall be merely contributing to the debase- 
ment of our native language. The cry for ' Saxon 
English ' sometimes means nothing more than a 
demand for plain and unaffected diction, and a 
condemnation of the idle taste for "words of 
learned length and thundering sound," which 
has prevailed at some periods of our literature. 
So far, it is worthy of all respect ; but the ped- 
antry that would bid us reject the word fittest 
for our purpose because it is not of native origin 
ought to be strenuously resisted. 

It is not uncommon to meet with sneers at 
the pedantry of English men of science in fram- 
ing their technical words from Greek and Latin, 
when they might express their meaning by 
words taken from the vocabulary of common 
life. There is no doubt that it is foolish to 
use technical terms when scientific precision is 



108 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

unnecessary, and where the meaning may be 
as well expressed in words intelligible to the 
unlearned. But, on the other hand, every sci- 
ence needs its special vocabulary of terms that 
can be definitely limited to one precise meaning. 
It would have been possible to construct a vo- 
cabulary for modern science consisting of popu- 
lar words taken in arbitrarily restricted senses, 
and of compounds formed out of native Eng- 
lish elements. In German, indeed, this kind of 
thing has been done to a very considerable ex- 
tent. But it is often a positive disadvantage that 
a scientific word should suggest too obtrusively 
its etymological meaning. A term which is 
taken from a foreign language, or formed out 
of foreign elements, can be rigidly confined to 
the meaning expressed in its definition ; a term 
of native formation cannot be so easily divested 
of misleading popular associations. If, for ex- 
ample, the English founders of the science of 
geology had chosen to call it 'earth-lore,' every 
one would have felt that the word ought to 
have a far wider meaning than that which was 
assigned to it. The Greek compound, which 
etymologically means just the same thing, has 
been without difficulty restricted to one only 
of the many possible applications of its literal 



in.] WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO FOREIGN TONGUES 109 

sense. Sometimes also a scientific term embodies 
in its etymology a notion which the progress of 
discovery shows to have been erroneous or im- 
perfect : thus the name oxygen, formed by the 
French chemists from Greek elements, literally 
implies that the element so called is the dis- 
tinctive constituent of acids. If our chemists, 
instead of adopting the word as it stands, had 
framed a native compound of corresponding 
meaning (as the Germans have done in their 
Sauerstoff), the retention of the name would 
have had the inconvenient result of suggesting 
to beginners in chemistry an erroneous notion. 
As it is, we can continue to speak of ' oxygen ' 
without thinking of its etymology, while if we 
do happen to know the literal sense we may 
learn from it an interesting fact in the 
history of science. There is some ground 
for the complaint that the student who is 
ignorant of Greek and Latin may find the 
existing terminology of modern science a 
severe burden on his memory. But this disad- 
vantage, though real, is far smaller than those 
that would result from any thoroughgoing attempt 
to introduce vernacular equivalents for the terms 
of classical derivation. It is, however, much to 
be desired that men of science would take 



no THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. hi. 

greater pains to fashion their new words in 
accordance with correct philological principles. 

Against the sentimental purism that regards 
mixture in language as a sin which no gain in 
expressive power can atone for, it would be vain 
to attempt to argue. But if we are content to 
estimate the worth of a language by its effi- 
ciency in fulfilling the purposes for which 
language exists, we cannot reasonably deny that 
English has been immeasurably improved by its 
incorporation of alien elements. The slender 
vocabulary of Old English might, no doubt, 
have attained a great degree of copiousness 
purely by development of its native resources, 
without foreign aid ; but, so far as we can see, 
the subtlety and varied force characteristic of 
modern English could never have been acquired 
by this means. It is true that our language is 
a difficult instrument to use with full effect, on 
account of its richness in those seeming 
synonyms which ignorant or careless writers 
employ without discrimination; but in skilled 
hands it is capable of a degree of precision and 
energy which can be equalled in few languages 
either ancient or modern. 



CHAPTER IV. 

WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH. 

The English language has augmented its resources 
not only by the adoption of words from other 
tongues, but also by the making of new words. 
There are three possible ways in which a new word 
can be made : (i) by Composition, which means the 
joining together of two existing words to form a 
compound ; (2) by Derivation, which means the 
making of a new word out of an old one, usually 
by the addition of some prefix or suffix which is 
not itself a word, but is significant in combina- 
tion ; and (3) by Root-creation, which is the 
invention of an entirely new word, usually either 
imitative of some inarticulate noise, or suggested 
by some instinctive feeling of expressiveness. 

§ 1. Composition. 

A compound word is a word formed by joining 
two or more words to express a meaning that 

in 



H2 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

could be rendered by a phrase of which the 
simple words form part. Some languages have 
no compound words at all ; and those which 
have them do not all form them after the same 
manner. The principles of English word-com- 
pounding are, to a great extent, inherited from 
the primitive Indo-Germanic language. In those 
kinds of compounds that most frequently occur, 
the last element expresses a general meaning, which 
the prefixed element renders less general. Thus 
an apple-tree is a tree, but only a particular kind 
of tree. In the original Indo-Germanic language 
the prefixed element in a compound of this sort 
was not, properly speaking, a word, but a word- 
stem : that is to say, a word deprived of those 
grammatical characters — case, number, gender, 
mood, tense, person, etc., which it would possess 
if it occurred separately in a sentence. 1 It has 
still this character, so far as meaning is concerned, 
in those English compounds that are formed on 
the inherited pattern. Thus apple- in apple-tree is 
neither singular nor plural, neither nominative, 

1 This comes out clearly in such a language as Greek, which has 
preserved the primitive Indo-Germanic system of inflexions. Thus 
oikodespotes is Greek for ' master of a house ' ; but while despotes 
1 master,' is a real word, oiko-, * house,' is only a stem. To make 
it into a word, capable of being used in a sentence, we must add the 
endings that mark case and number, as in oikos, nom. sing., oikon, 
ace. sing., oikou, gen. sing., oikoi, nom. pi., oikous, ace. plural. 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 113 

accusative, nor genitive. Hence the phrase for 
which such a compound is the condensed expres- 
sion admits of great variety of form ; the former 
of the two words may occur in it in any case or in 
either number ; and the meaning of the compound 
varies accordingly. A tree-frog is a frog that lives 
in trees ; a tree-fern is a fern that is a tree ; a 
"tree-fruit is the fruit produced by a tree. As a 
general rule, our knowledge of the things denoted 
by the simple words guides us at once to a 
correct understanding of the meaning of the com- 
pound. This, however, is not always the case. 
A house-boat might very well mean a sort of boat 
usually kept in a boat-house, or a boat that 
belongs to a house, or that supplies the needs of 
houses. It is only custom that has decided that 
the compound word shall mean a boat that serves 
as a house. The general meaning of this class 
of compounds might be expressed by saying that 
the noun which is formed of the two nouns A and 
B means ' a B which has some sort of relation to 
an A or to A's in general.' 

The compounds formed by prefixing one noun 
to another, however, constitute only one out of 
the many classes of compounds which exist in 
English. There are compounds of adjective and 
noun, as blackbird, hotbed '; of adverb and noun, as 



1 1 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

downfall '; of noun and adjective, as grass-green, 
parse-proud, penny-wise; of adjective or adverb 
and adjective, as dark-blue, ever-young; and of noun 
or adjective and verb, as wiredraw, %vhitewash\ 
and the very many compounds of adverb and 
verb, such as overcome, inlay, outlive, upturn. In all 
these cases the literal meaning of the compound is 
that of the last element, only limited or specialised! 
There are other compounds to which this descrip- 
tion is not applicable. We have, for instance, 
adjectives like barefoot (having the feet bare); 
nouns like redstart (a bird which has a red ' start ' 
or tail); and adjectives like long-haired, five-leaved, 
lion-hearted, which are derivatives formed from 
combinations of two words. From the fifteenth 
century onwards many compound nouns and 
adjectives have been formed in imitation of French, 
in which the first element is a verb-stem (in the 
original examples it was the imperative of a verb) 
and the second element is a noun denoting the 
object of the action, as in breakfast, breakneck, 
kill-joy, makeshift, save-all, scapegrace, scarecrow, 
spendthrift, tosspot, turnkey. We have also many 
nouns and adjectives compounded with a verb- 
stem and an adverb, as break-up, come-down, 
knock-out, run-away. 

Some of the types of compounds enumerated 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 115 

above are formed on patterns which have 
come down by tradition from times before the 
English or even the Germanic language had any 
existence, when the elements that were joined in 
composition were not words but mere word-stems ; 
while others were originally what are called by 
grammarians ' improper ' or ' spurious ' compounds. 
An improper compound is a phrase consisting 
of words in regular syntactical relation, which 
has come to be regarded as a single word. Such, 
in modern English, are father-in-law, man-of- 
war, jews -harp. Words like tradesman and 
gownsman may be regarded as improper com- 
pounds, because they are at any rate imitated 
from phrases in which the first word was a noun 
in the genitive case. 

From the point of view of the modern language, 
in which the loss of inflexions has obscured the 
difference between words and word-stems, and in 
which the attributive use of the noun is an 
ordinary part of syntax, the distinction of ' proper ' 
and ' improper ' compounds is only partially valid ; 
but historically it is of considerable importance. 

As any page of an * Anglo-Saxon ' dictionary 
will show, compound words were abundant in 
Old English; and in every succeeding age of 
the language a multitude of new compounds have 



u6 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

come into existence. And yet, if we take a page 
of modern German and place beside it a good 
translation into English, we shall not fail to 
perceive that the compound words are very 
much more numerous in the German original 
than in the English rendering. Another note- 
worthy fact is that a great number of compounds, 
once generally used, are now obsolete, although 
the simple words composing them are still 
universally familiar. It may be worth while to 
inquire why this has happened. 

Although word-composition, in those lan- 
guages which freely admit it, is one of the 
readiest means of supplying the need for new 
words, compounds are often somewhat awkward 
in actual use. A compound word is a descrip- 
tion, often an imperfect description; and when 
an object of perception or thought is familiar 
to us, we desire that its name shall suggest the 
thing to our minds directly, and not through 
the intervention of irrelevant ideas. Accordingly, 
a compound word for a simple notion gives a 
certain sense of inconvenience, unless we are 
able to forget its literal meaning. It is true 
that we frequently succeed in doing this : we 
use multitudes of compound words without 
mentally analysing them at all. In such cases 









iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 117 

the compound often undergoes processes of 
phonetic change which a distinct consciousness 
of its etymological meaning would not have 
allowed to take place. Thus the Old English 
godspel, literally 'good tidings' (which early 
became godspel, through misreading the first 
element as 'God' instead of 'good'), is now 
gospel '; the late Old English husbonda, 3. com- 
pound of hus house and bonda dweller, cul- 
tivator, is now not housebond but husband \ the 
poetical designation day's eye is now daisy, a 
word which we never think of as containing 
two elements; holy day has become holiday; 
Christ's mass is now Christmas, with an altered 
pronunciation which quite disguises the first 
word. This process is especially observable in 
place-names, where, even more than in ordinary 
compound words, the original descriptive meaning 
is a palpable irrelevance. Very few names of 
English places are now intelligible to persons 
unlearned in etymology, even when the separate 
words of which they are composed are still 
familiar in everyday speech. The Old English 
stan survives as ' stone,' and tun as ' town ' ; 
but the place-name Stantun is now not ' Stone- 
town' but 'Stanton.' Pedridan-tun, the 'town' 
or farm enclosure on the river Pedride, is now 



n8 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Petherton, though the name of the river has 
come to be pronounced 'Parret' 

A consideration of these and similar examples 
will show that compound words have often the 
disadvantage that their etymological meaning 
has to be forgotten before they can become 
quite satisfactory instruments of expression. It 
would appear that the English are, from what- 
ever cause, more conscious of this inconvenience 
than are the speakers of some other languages. 
At any rate, although many new compounds 
have been formed in every period of the 
language, a large proportion of them have been 
short-lived or of very limited currency : the 
general tendency has been to replace them by 
other words. In the Middle English period this 
tendency was fostered by the circumstance 
that the two fashionable languages, French and 
Latin, make very little use of composition ; 
and the common practice of adopting words 
from these languages made it easy to find 
substitutes for the native compounds. The Old 
English names for arts and sciences — such as 
Iczcecraft (leechcraft) for medicine, scopcrceft for 
poetry, tungolcrceft for astronomy, rlmcmft for 
arithmetic — disappeared early from the lan- 
guage, their places being taken by words adopted 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 119 

through French from Latin, or through French 
and Latin from Greek. The fourteenth century- 
monk who wrote ayenbite (of inwyt) for * remorse 
(of conscience) ' did not succeed in inducing any- 
other writer to use his new word : the Latin- 
French synonym was felt to be better for its 
purpose. Even now, a well-established compound 
is often partly superseded by a simple word or a 
derivative : for example, we use the word steamer 
more frequently than steamboat or steamship. 

The habit of freely adopting foreign words, 
which has been produced by the conditions under 
which the English language has been developed, 
has had the good effect of relieving us from the 
necessity of having recourse to composition in 
cases where a compound, as such, is less suitable 
for our purpose than a simple word. But, on the 
other hand, our language has lost^something of its 
capacity for forming compounds even where they 
would be useful. When Carlyle, imitating the 
German Schadenfreude, speaks of " a mischief -joy, 
which is often a justice-joy," we somehow feel that 
these formations are alien to the genius of the 
language, though if it were not for this the words 
would have been welcome additions to our vocab- 
ulary. It would seem un-English to say that a 
person was rank-proud, though the apparently 



120 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

analogous purse-proud has long been a recognised 
word ; and country-love or virtue-love for ' love of 
country/ ' love of virtue,' would be equally in- 
admissible. And yet not only does modern 
English possess an enormous number of com- 
pounds, but new ones are continually introduced ; 
and, what is still more remarkable, many of these 
additions to our language, when we first hear 
them, do not seem in the slightest degree novel. 
Probably nobody has ever used or ever will use 
the word purple-eared '; but if the meaning ever 
needs to be expressed no one will say that the 
word is not English. It is not easy to say 
definitely what kinds of compounds are rejected 
by the instinct of the language and what kinds 
are freely admitted. In general, the new com- 
pounds that find ready acceptance are those 
which belong to some particular type or pattern 
which is exemplified in a large number of common 
words. One such type is that of the so-called 
' parasynthetic ' formation, like blue-eyed, long- 
haired, swallow-tailed. English idiom leaves us 
almost as free to invent new compounds of the 
type of blue-eyed as to invent new phrases of 
the type of with blue eyes. When one or both the 
elements happen to be very commonly used in 
combinations of this kind, the compound adjective, 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 121 

whether we have met with it before or not, is 
quite as natural a mode of expression as the 
equivalent phrase. But when this is not the case, 
the ' parasynthetic ' adjective, though still allow- 
able, strikes us as somewhat artificial, and a 
composition in which such words occur very 
frequently is apt to sound affected. 

There are several other types of composition 
which are so familiar to us from the multitude of 
existing specimens that we can employ them 
almost without restriction to form new words. 
For instance, we seldom hesitate to make, when- 
ever we feel the need of it, a new compound on 
the pattern of coach-house, hair-brush, water-jug, 
where the first element indicates the particular use 
to which the object designated is adapted. It 
may be remarked that the composition of long 
polysyllables is generally avoided as ungraceful : 
and, further, that most of the words derived from 
French and Latin appear somewhat unfrequently 
in compounds, probably because in the periods 
when word-composition was most frequent they 
were still felt to be more or less exotic. 

With reference to the formation of compound 
verbs, modern English is somewhat peculiar in 
its usages. Perhaps the reader may be familiar 
with the practice of modern German in dealing 



122 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

with what are called separable prefixes. In the 
German dictionaries we find a verb aufgeben, 
compounded of the adverb anf ' up ' and the verb 
geben 'to give.' In the infinitive this is written 
as one word, the adverbial part coming first. So 
it is, under certain conditions, in the indicative 
and subjunctive; but 'I give it up* is ordinarily 
rendered in German by ich gebe es auf, where 
the two elements are treated as separate words, 
the adverb coming last, with the object-pronoun 
between it and the verb. Now combinations of 
this sort may, from one point of view, be regarded 
as phrases rather than as compounds; the adverb 
and the verb are really separate words. The 
idiom of the language requires that under some 
conditions the adverb shall precede the verb 
and that under other conditions it shall follow 
it; and in the former case custom has ordered 
that the two words shall be written as one. In 
Old English the position of the adverb was simi- 
larly variable (though the rules for its position 
were not so strict as in German); but in modern 
English prose we must always put the adverb 
last. In poetry, indeed, there are exceptions. 
Browning writes : 

" Then a beam of fun outbroke 
On the bearded mouth that spoke." 






iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 123 

But outbroke is merely poetical : in plain prose 
we must say 'broke out' We can, if we please, 
call give up, break out, set up, put through, and 
such like, ' compound verbs ' ; and in a certain 
sense the appellation is quite justifiable. If we 
adopt this nomenclature the number of compound 
verbs in English is beyond all calculation, and 
in fact we are continually inventing new ones. 
In its power of expressing fine distinctions of 
meaning by this method English vies with Greek 
and German, and has a great advantage over 
the Romanic languages, which have hardly any 
compound verbs at all. 

But alongside these 'virtual compounds,' 
English has a considerable number of verbs 
formed with prefixed adverbs, such as overtake, 
upset, understand. In most cases their meaning 
is not obvious from their composition, and it is 
usually quite different from that of the com- 
bination of the verb with the following adverb. 
1 To overtake a person ' does not mean the same 
as * to take a person over ' ; 'to upset a thing ' 
happens to have a meaning quite opposite to 
that of 'to set a thing up.' Compounds of this 
class originated in an older stage of the language : 
the principle of composition which they represent 
has almost died out, so that as a rule we cannot 



124 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

form any new words on the same pattern. We 
can, it is true, with some degree of freedom, 
prefix over, and under, with the sense ' too much,' 
'too little,' to verbs; but in general the modern 
feeling of the language resists the introduction 
of compounds of this kind, and very few of 
them have come in since the sixteenth century. 

It is equally foreign to the spirit of the modern 
language to add to the number of those com- 
pound nouns or adjectives which are formed 
by prefixing an adverb to a verb-stem, a verbal 
noun, or a participle, such as outbreak, outfit, 
income, downfall, downsitting, uprising, onlooker, 
outfit, forthcoming, downtrodden. The method of 
formation of these words is a relic of the time 
when in a verbal phrase the adverb could precede 
the verb — when, for instance, it was as natural 
to say ' to out break ' as 'to break out ' ; but 
new compounds of the kind could be easily 
formed down to the seventeenth century. They 
are fairly abundant, and admirably expressive; 
but we have almost 1 entirely ceased to form 

1 A word of this formation which has recently gained some currency 
in journalistic use is upkeep, meaning ' (cost of) keeping-up.' It 
appears to have been imported from the Scottish dialect, in which 
this mode of composition has been more generally used than 
in standard English. From the same source we have obtained 
outcome (brought into literary English by Carlyle) and uptake. 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 125 

new words on the same pattern. Although we 
perhaps more frequently say * to fit up ' than * to 
fit out,' it would seem very eccentric to speak 
of an upfit> or an upfitter\ and we should not 
think of using downbroken as a parallel to down- 
trodden. Cyclists talk of * lighting-up time,' not 
of 'uplighting time,' which would be quite un- 
idiomatic. Indeed many such compounds that 
were once current are now gone out of general 
use. The translators of our Bible could write 
1 My downsitting and mine uprising ' ; but in 
natural modern English the equivalent expression 
would be ' my sitting down and my rising up.' 
Not long ago a very able foreign scholar, writing 
a grammatical treatise in English, puzzled his 
readers by using the word down-toners as a name 
for the class of adverbs which (like rather^ some- 
what) ' tone down ' the force of the words to 
which they are prefixed. No doubt, if the 
phrase * to tone down ' had existed in the 
sixteenth century, a writer of that period could 
have spoken of a ' down-toner ' without any risk 
of not being understood. But in this respect 
the language has undergone a change, which 
may be a change for the worse, but which it 
would be vain to try to resist. 

The composition of an agent-noun with a 



126 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

following adverb, which was foreign to English in 
its earliest stages, has been fairly common from 
the fourteenth century onwards. Chaucer has 
" holdere tip of Troye " ; Lydgate speaks of 
Nimrod as "fynder up of false religions " ; 
Shakspere has " the finder-out of this secret " ; 
the Bible of 1611 has "a setter-forth of 
strange gods " ; later examples of this mode 
of formation are cutter-out, hanger-on, filler-in, 
fitter-up. 

The English of poetry and of impassioned 
writing differs considerably in its principles of 
word-composition from the English of ordinary 
prose. Most of the compounds that are in 
ordinary use are too lifeless, too unsuggestive, or 
too trivial in association to be freely employed in 
poetry, while, on the other hand, our poets have 
generally assumed great liberty in the invention 
of compounds which in prose would be quite 
inadmissible. In this respect, however, there are 
great differences between poets, even those who 
are most nearly equal in rank. While Shakspere 
abounds with splendid audacities such as "proud- 
pied April," " a heaven-kissing hill," " the world- 
without-end hour," Spenser's inventions of this 
kind are comparatively few, though the exceeding 
felicity of some of them (as " self -consuming care," 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 127 

" silver-di'opping tears ") causes them to make an 
impression that has led many to suppose that 
they are peculiarly characteristic of his style. 
" Rosy-fingered Morn," which occurs in Spenser, is 
a literal rendering of Homer's rhododaktulos Eos. 
The translators of Homer, from Chapman down- 
wards, have naturally been led to imitate the 
compound epithets of the original; and, partly 
through this channel, and partly owing to the 
classical learning of our poets, the copious word- 
composition of Greek has had great influence on 
the diction of English poetry. Of the greater 
poets of the nineteenth century, Wordsworth is 
the most sparing in the use of compounds, and 
this characteristic may be accounted for by his 
love of simplicity and naturalness of expression, 
and his aversion to the production of poetic effect 
by any other means than the direct appeal of 
thought and feeling to the mind of the reader. 
There is generally little in common between 
Wordsworth and Byron ; yet Byron's rhetorical 
fervour is little more favourable to the use of 
this means of expression than is the simplicity of 
the other poet. He employs but few compounds, 
and hardly ever any that were not already 
current. On the other hand, Shelley, Keats, 
Tennyson, and Browning are all, for different 



128 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

reasons founded in their diversities of poetic tem- 
perament, remarkable for their fertility in the 
invention of novel compounds. It would be 
highly interesting to consider how the differences 
of spirit and feeling in these poets reveal them- 
selves in the different ways in which they employ 
this method of enriching their vocabulary; but 
the matter belongs rather to the domain of the 
literary critic than to that of the student of 
language. 

§ 2. Derivation. 

Old English was considerably less rich than 
modern English in methods of making new 
words by derivation. It is true that a large 
portion of the Old English vocabulary consists 
of words derived from other words that existed 
in the language. But very many of these de- 
rivatives had been already formed before the 
English came over from the continent, and the 
processes by which they were made had become 
obsolete before the date of the earliest Old 
English literature. Perhaps this statement may 
need a little illustration to make it clear to 
readers unacquainted with philology. Every- 
body can see that the word laughter is derived 
from the verb laugh) and yet we should never 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 129 

think of forming a new substantive by the same 
process from any other verb. One of Mr. F. R. 
Stockton's personages, indeed, speaks of a dog 
"bursting into barkter" but nobody would seri- 
ously propose to coin a new word of this kind. 
The ending -ter is no longer 'a living suffix,' 
and, in fact, it had ceased to be such before 
Old English existed as a separate language. 
Many other suffixes which appear in Old Eng- 
lish derivatives were, in like manner, never used 
in the formation of new words. 

There is in English a large class of deriva- 
tive verbs which, if there were no other evidence 
but that afforded by Old English itself, we 
should have to regard as formed from other Old 
English words, either nouns, adjectives, or verbs, 
by altering their vowel. Thus we find a noun 
talu y tale (in both senses, ' number' and ' story') 
and a verb tellan, to tell (again in both senses, 
'to count' and 'to narrate'); a noun salu, sale, 
and a verb sellan, to sell. Tynan, to enclose, is 
derived from tun, enclosure ; bledan, to bleed, from 
blod, blood ; blizcan, to bleach, from bide, white 
or pale ; fiellan, to fell, cause to fall, from feallan, 
to fall. A comparison of these words with their 
equivalents in the other Germanic languages 
teaches us that the true account of their origin 

K 



i 3 o THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

is as follows : By the addition of a suffix -jo 
(pronounced yo) to the stem of the substantive 
adjective or verb, a new verb-stem was formed, 
to which the endings of mood, tense, and 
person were appended. The earlier forms of 
the verbs above mentioned were taljan^ saljan, 
tunjan, blodjan, blaikjan, falljan. In prehistoric 
Old English the j in this position always pro- 
duced an alteration in the vowel of the preced- 
ing syllable (unless that vowel was i)> and 
caused the preceding consonant to be length- 
ened or doubled if the vowel before it was 
short. Hence taljan became first telljan and 
then tellan^ blodjan became bledan; and so with 
the rest. But all this had already taken place 
before Old English became a written language; 
and when it had taken place there was an end 
to the possibility of forming any new 'verbs of 
making or causing' by the process which had 
previously been so easy. All the verbs appar- 
ently formed by vowel change that existed in 
Old English were inherited from prehistoric 
times. Perhaps we might have expected that 
new derivatives would have been formed by vowel- 
change, in imitation of those which already ex- 
isted (for instance, a verb gedan, to make good, 
might have been formed from god, imitating the 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 131 

relation between col cool and celan to cool) ; but, 
so far as we know, nothing of the sort ever 
happened. The Old English language, at the 
earliest period at which it is known to us, had 
already lost one of the most useful of the means 
for word-making which it originally possessed. 

Almost all those modes of derivation which 
were actually current in Old English have con- 
tinued in constant use down to the present 
time. Only a few of the most important of 
them need be mentioned here. In Old English, 
a verb could be formed from a noun by attach- 
ing the conjugational endings to the stem of the 
noun : thus, from wilcunta, a welcome guest, was 
formed the verb wilcumian to welcome (ic wil- 
cumige I welcome, ic zvilcumode I welcomed). 
In later English, through the dropping away of 
final syllables, the infinitive, the imperative, and 
the plural and the first person singular of the 
present indicative of the derived verb have the 
same form as the primary noun, so that what 
takes place seems to be not the making of a 
new word but the using of a noun as a verb. 
Hence the operation has become, in modern 
English, so easy that we perform it almost un- 
consciously. In colloquial language, we can 
make new verbs with extraordinary freedom, 



i 3 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

not only from nouns, but even from phrases. 
" He ' my-dear-fellow '-ed me all the day," for 
instance, is quite permissible conversational 
English. Conversely, in modern English, we 
have an almost unlimited number of nouns 
which are merely verbs used substantively to 
denote an act. We can speak of ' a wash,' ' a 
shave,' ' a think,' * a tumble down,' ' a dig in 
the ribs.' Occasionally it happens that a noun 
in this way gives rise to a verb, which in its 
turn gives rise to another noun, all three words 
being exactly alike in sound and spelling. 
Thus, in the following examples: (i) 'The 
smoke of a pipe,' (2) 'To smoke a pipe,' (3) 
'To have a smoke? the noun of (1) is not, 
strictly speaking, the same word as the noun 
of (3). It is true that in cases like this our 
dictionaries usually treat the secondary noun as 
merely a special sense of the primary noun ; 
and, indeed, very often this treatment is un- 
avoidable, because the difference of meaning 
between the two is so slight that in some con- 
texts it disappears altogether. Still, it ought not 
to be forgotten that from the historical point of 
view the two nouns are really distinct : if Eng- 
lish had retained its original grammatical system 
this would probably have been shown by a dif- 



IV.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 133 

ference of termination, gender, or declension. 
Sometimes an Old English substantive and the 
verb derived from it have both survived, but, 
owing to the kind of sound-change which we 
have named ' divergent development,' the two 
have little or no resemblance in sound. Under 
these circumstances, the noun and the verb are 
no longer distinctly recognised as correlated in 
meaning, and the modern language has supplied 
the need for a closely-connected pair of words 
by turning the noun into a verb and vice versa. 
For example, the verb bathe is, as its spelling still 
shows, a derivative of bath) but in pronunciation 
the two have nothing in common but the initial b. 
Hence, we now speak of ' a bathe] which does not 
mean quite the same as ' a bath ' ; and, on the 
other hand, the noun bath has given rise to a verb 
'to bath] which differs in meaning from 'to bathe.' 
The following words of modern origin may 
serve to illustrate the freedom with which we 
can still form new derivatives by means of suffixes 
inherited from Old English : cleverness, clever/^, 
gentleman^, roguish, thinker, noisj/, horseman.?//?/. 
The English reader will be able at once to re- 
collect many other words formed with each of 
these suffixes, and will perceive also that he 
might, without seeming at all eccentric in so 



i 3 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

doing, venture to use any one of them to form 
quite new words. Similarly, we can prefix the 
Old English negative particle un- to almost any 
descriptive adjective. There is another prefix un- 
(of different origin) which we can prefix quite 
freely to verbs to express a reversal of the action, 
as in unfasten, uncover •; and the list of verbs 
formed with be- (like befog, bemuddle) is almost 
interminable. 

There are one or two Old English suffixes for 
which the later language has discovered new uses. 
The ending -isc (now -ish) was in Old English 
chiefly used to form adjectives from names of 
places or peoples, as in Englisc English, Lundenisc 
Londonish. It was also appended in a few 
instances to common nouns to form adjectives 
of quality, as in folcisc popular (from folc, ' folk,' 
people), cildisc childish. The suffix -ish is still a 
living formative in both these uses. But about 
1400 it began to be attached to names of colour, 
to form adjectives denoting a colour approaching 
that expressed by the simple word, as in bluish, 
blackish. On the analogy of the adjectives thus 
formed it afterwards became common to add -ish 
to any sort of descriptive adjective, in order to 
express a slight degree of the quality which they 
indicate. It was thenceforth possible, instead of 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 135 

saying ' somewhat good ' or ' somewhat bad,' to 
express the idea by the single word goodish or 
baddish. To the characteristic English love of 
brevity this innovation was welcome ; and in 
modern English we can append the suffix to any 
adjective denoting a quality that admits of 
degrees. 

The ending -ly, representing the Old English 
-lice, forming adverbs of manner from adjectives, 
became in Middle English much more common, 
because the final -e, which in Old English was the 
ordinary adverbial suffix, ceased to be pronounced, 
so that the adjective and its related adverb 
became identical in form. Early in the sixteenth 
century, the need was felt for adverbs to indicate 
position in a numbered series ; that is to say, for 
single words with such meanings as ' in the first, 
second, or third place.' The need was supplied 
by the addition of the adverbial ending -ly to the 
ordinal numeral, as in firstly, secondly, thirdly, 
fourthly, which were unknown to the older lan- 
guage. 

Since the close of the Old English period, the 
vocabulary of our language has been enriched 
by a multitude of new derivatives formed with 
the prefixes and suffixes that already existed 



136 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

in Old English ; and there can be no doubt that 
the formation of new words by this means will 
continue in the future. But the native machinery 
of derivation, though very little of it has become 
obsolete, has not been found sufficient for the 
necessities of the language, and has been largely 
supplemented by additions obtained from other 
languages. The adoption of foreign formative 
machinery has been rendered possible by the fact 
that many Latin and French primitive words have 
been taken into the English language along with 
their derivatives, formed with French or Latin 
suffixes. When such pairs of words as derive and 
derivation, esteem and estimation, land and lauda- 
tion, condemn and condemnation, had found their 
way into the English vocabulary, it was natural 
that the suffix -ation should be recognised by 
English speakers as an allowable means of 
making ' nouns of action ' out of verbs. This 
particular suffix supplied a real want, because the 
only native means of forming nouns of action 
was the suffix -ing, which was not quite definite 
enough in meaning. It is true that this foreign 
suffix has not been very extensively attached to 
native words ; as a rule, it has been felt to be 
more in accordance with fitness to adopt French 
or Latin nouns of action ready made. Still, such 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 137 

words as botheration, starvation, fairation, flirta- 
tion, backwardation, show that -ation has to some 
extent been regarded as an English formative. 
Another foreign suffix, -ative, though very common 
in words of Latin derivation, has been appended 
to a native verb only in one instance, viz. talkative. 
Such formations as unwalkative have been em- 
ployed jocularly, but have never taken root in the 
language. 

In some instances the attempt to naturalise 
a foreign suffix has failed because there was no 
real need to be supplied. Wyclif's everlastingtee 
(suggested by eternitee from eterne) did not find 
acceptance ; the suffix -tee (now -ty) is confined 
to words either taken from French or Latin, or 
at least formed from French or Latin words. The 
native -ness answered all purposes, and the intro- 
duction of a foreign synonym was not required. 

It was otherwise with many other French 
suffixes, such as -age, -al (as used in withdrawal, 
upheaval, betrothal), -ment, -able, which had 
nothing corresponding to them in English, and 
which have been used to form great numbers of 
words that the language could badly afford to 
do without. The endings -ise, -ist, -ism, -ite, 
originally Greek, have been very extensively used 
in the formation of English derivatives. 



1 38 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Old English, in comparison with most other 
Xndo-Germanic languages, was remarkably poor 
in diminutive endings, and those which did exist 
were sparingly used. One of them was -incel, as 
in tunincel a little ' town ' or homestead ; but this 
did not survive into Middle English. The ending 
-ling' can hardly be said to have had a diminutive 
force in Old English, but it was frequently so used 
in Old Norse, as in g&slingr, which was adopted 
into English as gosling (dialectal ly ge sling). 
The Norse suffix has in modern English 
become quite common as a means of forming 
diminutive nouns. We have kingling, princeling, 
squireling, and many similar words. In the 
fourteenth century the Dutch or Flemish diminu- 
tive ending -kin (identical with the German -cheri) 
came into English use, chiefly from nicknames 
like Willekin, little William, Jankin, little John. 
The fashion of forming such nicknames from 
Christian names became exceedingly popular, and 
has left abundant traces in modern surnames like 
Jenkins, Atkins, Dawkins, Wilkins. In imitation 
of these proper names, the suffix was afterwards 
attached to ordinary substantives, and in modern 
English we can, at least in jocular speech, add 
-kin to almost any noun to form a diminutive. 
Even more common than -kin, and more dignified 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 139 

in use, is -let, which we have adopted from French, 
and have appended to many native words, as in 
cloudlet, streamlet, brooklet, leaflet, ringlet, booklet. 
There are two or three foreign prefixes that 
have been so completely taken into English that 
we use them almost or quite as freely as we do 
those of native origin. The most useful of these 
is the Latin re-, again. No dictionary will ever 
contain all the words formed with this prefix that 
have been used by English writers ; the com- 
pounds of re- with verbs and nouns of action are 
as innumerable as those of tin- with adjectives. 
In Middle English again- was often used as a 
prefix, but the words so formed have become 
obsolete : the English love of brevity has caused 
the native prefix to be supplanted by the foreigner. 
The Latin and French dis- comes next in fre- 
quency of use. Although Lydgate, writing about 
1430, uses the word distrust, it was not until a 
hundred years later that it became a common 
practice to attach this prefix to native words. 
In 1659 a grammarian writes that dis-, like un- 
and re-, " may be prefixed at pleasure." Perhaps 
this statement was even at that time somewhat 
exaggerated, and it would certainly be far from 
correct now. Of the multitude of words beginning 
with this prefix coined in the sixteenth and seven- 



i 4 o THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

teenth centuries the greater part are obsolete 
(though many are still current, amongst them 
being such familiar words as dislike, distaste, dis- 
praise), and since 1700 very few new ones have 
come into use. The prefix, however, is still felt 
to be quite English : no one would find any diffi- 
culty in understanding such a word as dislove, 
though it has perhaps never been used for cen- 
turies. Writers of the nineteenth century have 
used the verbs disgod, dishero, and the nouns 
dishealth, discharity, but formations of this kind 
have now an appearance of being affected. The 
French en- or em- has been used to form several 
English derivatives, as endear, embody, embog, 
enliven, ensnare, entangle. In recent times the 
Greek anti-, against, has become thoroughly 
naturalised. Words like anti-slavery, anti-vac- 
cinator, anti-income-tax, anti-corn-law, anti-radical, 
are intelligible to every one, and their number is 
constantly increasing. Perhaps these formations 
should be placed rather under the head of com- 
bination than under that of derivation, though as 
the preposition anti has no separate existence in 
English this is a debatable question. There are 
other foreign elements which have in the same 
manner come into use as prefixes in the forma- 
tion of English words, such as the Latin pro in 






iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 141 

pro-Russian, pro-Boer \ post in post-Norman, post- 
date ; ante in antedate, anteroom (imitating ante- 
chamber, which is French); prce in pre-Roman, 
pre-Conquest; co- in co-mate ; sub in sub-let ; ex 
in ex-king \ inter in interlock; interleave', non in 
non-conductor, nonconformist, non-existence, non- 
natural. 

From these examples, to which many more 
might be added, it will be seen that the 
English language has not only very greatly 
enriched its vocabulary by direct borrowing 
from other tongues, but has also largely availed 
itself of foreign aid to increase its power of 
forming new words. There is very little in the 
borrowed machinery of suffixes and prefixes 
that can fairly be called superfluous. Almost 
without exception, it has been adopted, not out 
of foolish affectation, but because it supplied 
the means of expressing necessary meanings 
with a degree either of precision or of brevity 
to which the native resources of the language 
were inadequate. 

According to the definition which we gave of 
Derivation, 'the making of a new word out of 
an old one,' it includes two processes which 
have not hitherto been mentioned, but which 



i 4 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

have had a considerable share in the formation 
of the English vocabulary. There are Back- 
formation and Shortening. 



Back-formation. 

There are many words in English which have 
a fallacious appearance of containing some well- 
known derivative suffix. It has not unfrequently 
happened that a word of this kind has been 
popularly supposed to imply the existence of a 
primary word from which it has been derived 
in the usual way. The result of this supposition 
is the unconscious creation of a new word, 
which is made out of the old one by depriving 
it of what is thought to be its suffix, or some- 
times by the substitution of a different suffix. 
According to some eminent scholars, the verb 
to beg has been in this way formed from beggar, 
which is thought to be adopted from the old 
French begar, a member of the religious order 
called Beghards, who supported themselves, like 
the friars, by begging. This etymology is dis- 
puted ; but there are many other instances of the 
process which are not open to question. The 
noun butcher is really from the French boucher, and 
the ending is not etymologically identical with 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 143 

the common English suffix of agent-nouns ; but in 
many dialects people have come to use the verb 
to butch, and to speak of 'the hutching business/ 
Other dialectal back-formations are buttle, to 
pour out liquor, from butler, and cuttle, to make 
knives, from cutler. The noun pedlar is older 
than the verb to peddle or the adjective ped- 
dling, and broker than the verb to broke (now 
obsolete) and the verbal noun broking. Grovel- 
ling was originally an adverb, meaning 'face 
downwards ' ; it was formed out of the old 
phrase on grufe (which had the same meaning) 
by adding the suffix -ling, which occurs in 
many other adverbs, now mostly obsolete, such 
as back ling, backwards, headling, head-first. But 
grovelling was misunderstood as a present par- 
ticiple, and the verb grovel was formed from it. 
Similarly the verbs sidle and darkle have been 
formed out of the old adverbs sideling and 
darkling. Probably the modern verb nestle is 
not, as is commonly said, the same as the Old 
English nestlian to built a nest, but has been 
evolved from nestling, an inhabitant of a nest, 
used adjectively as in ' nestling brood.' Many 
of the words that have been formed by this 
process are so happily expressive that the mis- 
understanding that has given rise to them must 



144 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

be accounted a fortunate accident. It is to be 
hoped, however, that the adjective swashbuckling 
(formed from swashbuckler, literally one who 
'swashes' or flourishes his buckler), which has 
been used by many recent writers, will not 
obtain general currency. Proper names ending 
in -ing have often given occasion to humorists 
to treat them as verbal substantives, and to 
evolve verbs from them. Some years ago there 
was much talk about the ' Banting method ' of 
reducing corpulence, invented by a gentleman 
named Banting, and a verb to bant was for a 
time widely used. Still more recently, the 
uproarious rejoicings that hailed the news of 
the relief of the town of Mafeking, besieged by 
the Boers in 1900, suggested to some facetious 
journalist the formation of a verb to maffick 
(meaning to indulge in noisy demonstrations of 
patriotic joy), which is still common in news- 
papers, and has found a place in some dic- 
tionaries. 

An excellent illustration of the working of this 
process is seen in the origin of the verb edit. The 
Latin editor, literally ' one who gives out,' from 
the verb edere to give out, was after the invention 
of printing often employed in a special sense as 
denoting the person who 'gives to the world' a 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 145 

book or other literary work of which he is not the 
author. In this sense it has passed into English 
and other modern languages. But under modern 
conditions there are two different classes of per- 
sons concerned in the production of a book, to 
either of whom the word might be applied in its 
literal meaning with equal propriety. The ' giver- 
out ' of a book — for instance, of a classical text 
which has never before been printed — may mean 
what we now call the 'publisher,' the man who 
bears the expense of printing it and makes the 
arrangements for its circulation among the public, 
or it may mean the scholar who puts the text into 
order for publication and provides it with such 
illustrative matter as it is deemed to require. In 
early times these two functions were often united 
in the same person, but they are now ordinarily 
divided. Now while in French editeur ('editor') 
has come to mean 'publisher,' in English it has 
become restricted to the other of its possible ap- 
plications. When we use it we no longer think 
of its literal sense : the prominent function of an 
1 editor ' is not that of issuing a literary work to 
the public, but that of bringing it into the form in 
which it is to appear. Although editor is not a 
word of English formation, it has an ending which 
coincides in form with that of English agent-nouns, 



146 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

so that it has naturally suggested the coinage of a 
verb 'to edit,' meaning 'to prepare for publication 
as an editor does,' i.e. to put into such a form as 
is thought suitable for the public to read. When 
we say, usually with unfavourable meaning, that a 
war correspondent's telegrams have been ' edited,' 
we mean that they have undergone alterations or 
excisions in accordance with the press censor's 
notion of the amount of information which ought 
to be given to the public at home. Similarly, we 
may say that the composition of an illiterate or 
foolish person requires a great deal of ' editing ' in 
order to be suitable for publication. If, instead 
of adopting the Latin word, we had rendered it by 
some such equivalent as outgiver (corresponding 
to the German Herausgeber, which is used quite in 
the English sense of editor), there would have been 
no opportunity for the ' back-formation ' of a verb 
with a meaning so remote from the primary sense 
of the substantive. 

Under the head of 'back-formation' we may 
not inappropriately refer to those instances in 
which an ending common to a group of words 
has been treated as a separate word, denoting the 
genus of which the things signified by the various 
terms are species. The process is exemplified in 
Bishop Warburton's definition " Orthodoxy is my 






iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 147 

doxy, and heterodoxy is another man's doxy." 
As it happens, doxy has not come into general use 
as a synonym for ' mode of belief ' ; but we do 
speak, colloquially, of isms and ologies ; and 'vert 
(usually written with apostrophe) is, more or less 
jocularly, used to designate a person who, from 
opposite points of view, would be described as a 
'convert' or as a 'pervert.' The now common 
word cycle, meaning either a ' bicycle ' or a * tri- 
cycle,' is another example in point. Although it 
may suit the convenience of lexicographers to 
treat this word in the same article with the older 
word cycle (as in Tennyson's " a cycle of Cathay "), 
it is really an independent formation, which would 
have come into existence even if the other word 
of the same form had never been English. 

Shortening. 

The substitution, in hurried, careless, jocular 
or vulgar speech, of a part of a word for the 
whole, is common in most languages, and is 
especially congenial to the English fondness for 
brevity of utterance. It does not, by itself, 
constitute a mode of word-formation : the vulgar 
taters and bacca, for potatoes and tobacco, cannot be 
called new words, any more than any other mis- 



148 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

pronunciations can be so called. But when, as 
very often happens, the original word and its 
shortened form come both to be generally used 
by the same speakers with different meanings, or 
even only with a difference in the implied tone of 
feeling, a real addition has been made to the 
vocabulary of the language, and the lexicographer 
is bound to recognise the shortened form as a 
distinct word. Shortening, in such cases, is in the 
strictest sense a kind of derivation ; and it is a 
process which has contributed not a little to 
increase the English store of words. 

Even when the abbreviated form expresses 
precisely the same meaning as the original form, 
the two must often be reckoned as separate words, 
because the longer form is reserved for more 
dignified or more serious use. Omnibus and bus 
are synonymous in the sense that they denote the 
same objects ; but they are not absolute synonyms, 
because the one is more familiar in tone than the 
other; the two are used on different occasions. 
The same thing may be said of photograph and 
photo, or bicycle and bike, though here the ab- 
breviated forms are not universally accepted by 
educated people as legitimate. Sometimes what 
was at first only a jocular abbreviation has ousted 
the longer form from general use, as in the case of 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 149 

wig for periwig, which was originally an altered 
pronunciation of peruke. 

But very frequently a word which has been 
formed by shortening undergoes a sense-develop- 
ment of its own, in which the original word does 
not share. Even if anybody is pedantic enough 
to deny that bits is a distinct word from omnibus, 
he cannot refuse to admit that cab is a real word, 
though it was originally a shortened pronunciation 
of cabriolet. A cab and a cabriolet are not the 
same kind of vehicle at all. So, too, Miss, the 
title given to an unmarried woman, and Mrs. 
(pronounced Missis) are now quite different in 
meaning from each other, and from mistress, from 
which both are derived by shortening. There 
was a time when gent was used by educated 
people as a familiar abbreviation for gentleman, 
without any depreciatory implication. But in 
this use it was gradually discarded from the 
speech of the upper classes, and came to be a 
contemptuous designation for the vulgar pretenders 
to gentility in whose vocabulary it still survived. 
Cit is a similar abbreviation for citizen or city man, 
though its use was contemptuous from the be- 
ginning. 

Some words that originated as playful abbrevi- 
ations of other words are now used without any 



150 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

consciousness of their origin. Extra, in such 
phrases as ' an extra allowance,' is not the Latin 
word, but an abbreviation of extraordinary. An 
extra, meaning an edition of a newspaper out of 
the usual course, was at one time called 'an 
extraordinary.' Phiz does not, to most people 
who use it, call up any recollection of physiognomy, 
and only students of etymology know that chap is 
a shortening of chapman, properly meaning 
'trader.' 

In the Middle English and early Modern 
English periods it was very common, in the hurry 
of pronunciation, to drop an initial vowel which 
immediately preceded the stressed syllable of a 
word. In this way many words beginning with 
a vowel came to have an alternative form from 
which the first syllable was omitted ; and almost 
in every case in which both forms have survived 
a difference of meaning has been developed. 
Assize and size are so different in sense that 
no one could think of them as the same word, 
and yet the one is only a shortened pronunciation 
of the other. The standard magnitude of an 
article of commerce was settled by an ' assize ' or 
sitting of some constituted authority. Hence the 
standard or authorised magnitude of anything was 
called its assize or size, and afterwards the latter 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 151 

form came to mean magnitude in general. Tend, 
as in the phrase 'to tend the sick,' was origin- 
ally the same word as attend '; but the two verbs 
are no longer synonymous. Alone, which stands 
for an earlier all one, was in the Elizabethan 
period shortened into lone when used as an 
adjective. The Middle English phrase on live, 
equivalent to 'in life,' was commonly pronounced 
alive, and this, by shortening, afterwards yielded 
the adjective live. Mend was originally the 
same word as amend. The shorter form, as 
usual, serves for the trivial occasions of ordinary 
life, while the longer form is of more dignified 
application. We speak of mending a. stocking, 
but of amending an Act of Parliament. Some- 
times other prefixes than those consisting only 
of a vowel were dropped in the same way. The 
verb to vie is shortened from envie — not the same 
word as the modern envy, but adopted from the 
French envier, which comes from the Latin 
invitare to challenge ; so that vie and invite are 
in ultimate etymology the same. Fence is defence 
without its prefix ; and fend, from which fender 
is derived, is short for defend. Several words 
that originally began with dis- or des- now begin 
with s. Stain is a shorter form of distain, which 
is the Old French desteindre, to take out the dye 



152 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

of anything, from the prefix des-, dis-, and teindre 
to dye. Despite, from the Old French despit, 
the Latin despectus, a looking down, despising, 
has become spite. No word now sounds more 
thoroughly English than sport, which has, indeed, 
been adopted from English into foreign lan- 
guages ; yet it is a shortening of disport, which 
is a word of French origin. To * disport oneself ' 
is, literally interpreted, ' to carry oneself in a dif- 
ferent direction ' from that of one's ordinary busi- 
ness ; and hence disport and sport came to mean 
amusement or pastime. 

Besides the new words that owe their origin 
to shortening in pronunciation, there are others 
which have arisen out of abbreviations used in 
writing. Sometimes the mere initials of a phrase 
come to be treated as a word, the written letters 
being represented in pronunciation by their names. 
Thus we speak of ' a question of £ s. d. {el ess 
dee)'; or, again, of 'an M.P. (em pee),' or 'a 
D.C.L. {dee cee el),' meaning a person who is 
entitled to write those initials after his name. 
Sometimes, again, a word or phrase as abbreviated 
in writing happens to yield a pronounceable 
sequence of letters, and takes its place in the 
language as a word. This occurs most fre- 
quently with Latin phrases. Many of the 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 153 

shortened forms are vulgar or jocular, as infra 
dig, incog, nem. con., ' the pros and cons' But 
per cent, cent per cent, from the Latin (centum) 
per centum, are part of the ordinary English 
vocabulary. The most curious instance of the 
formation of a word by this process is culprit. 
Its origin is to be found in the strange corrupt 
Norman French once used in our courts of 
justice. When a prisoner had pleaded 'not guilty,' 
the reply made on behalf of the Crown was 
'culpable; prest.' This meant '(he is) guilty, 
(and we are) ready (to prove it).' In the reports 
of criminal cases the phrase was commonly 
abbreviated cid. prest, and afterwards corruptly 
ml. prit. Then in some way, not very clearly 
understood, it seems to have come about that 
the clerks of the Crown, modelling their pro- 
cedure on the pattern set in the written reports, 
fell into the practice of using the syllables cul 
prit as an oral formula ; and as this formula 
was followed by the question, ' How will you be 
tried ? ' addressed to the prisoner, it was popularly 
apprehended to mean ' guilty man.' The custom 
survived in the courts down to the eighteenth 
century; but when culprit became a current 
word with a new sense, it was probably felt 
that there was an injustice in addressing a 



154 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

prisoner by a term which presumed his guilt, 
and the use of the formula was discontinued. 



§ 3. Root-Creation. 

Perhaps few, even among professed students 
of language, are aware how large a portion of 
the English vocabulary has, in the ordinary sense 
of the word, no etymology at all. We do not 
mean merely that there are many words the 
origin of which is and will always remain un- 
known because of the imperfection of our means 
of discovery. This is no doubt quite true. But 
there are also many words which were neither 
inherited from Old English, nor adopted from 
any foreign language, nor formed out of any 
older English or foreign words by any process 
of composition or derivation. It is to instances 
of this kind that the name of * root-creation ' 
may be fitly applied. 

One of the principal forms of root-creation is 
that which is known by the name of Onomato- 
poeia. The word is Greek, and literally means 
* name-making.' It was used by the Greeks to 
express the fact (common in their own as in 
other languages) that a noise, or the object 
producing it, sometimes makes its own name'. 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 155 

that is to say, is denoted by a word formed in 
imitation of the sound. 

The number of ' echoic ' words (as they have 
been called by Dr. Murray) which have arisen 
in Middle and Modern English is very con- 
siderable. We may mention as examples bang, 
boo, boom, cackle, cheep, fizz, gibber, giggle, hiss, 
hum, mumble, pop, quack, rumble, simmer, sizzle, 
titter, twitter, whirr, whiz, whip-poor-will, and the 
reduplicated words bow-woiv, ding-doitg, flip-flop, 
hee-haw, ping-pong, pom-torn, rub-a-dub, tick-tack. 

It is possible that some of the words in the 
first part of this list may go back to Old English ; 
words of this kind are much more common in 
speech than in literature, and we are certainly 
far from knowing the whole of the Old English 
vocabulary. However, even if they are much 
older than they can be proved to be, there is 
no doubt that they are imitative in origin. 

The imitation of inarticulate by articulate 
sounds can never be accurate. Perhaps one or 
two birds do really ' make their names ' ; though 
even in the case of the cuckoo it is not quite 
certain that we actually hear the two consonants. 
But the cries of birds and animals, produced by 
organs having more or less similarity to our own, 
may be regarded as in some measure articulate. 



156 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

In general the rendering of noises into the sounds 
of human speech involves some play of fancy, 
like that which is exercised when we see faces in 
the fire, or landscapes in the clouds. The resem- 
blance which an imitative word is felt to bear to 
the inarticulate noise which it names consists not 
so much in similarity of impression on the ear as 
in similarity of mental suggestion. For instance, 
it is not at all literally true that a gun, or a 
heavy body impinging on a door, 'says bang? 
But the sequence of three sounds of which the 
word consists is of such a nature that it can 
easily be uttered with force, so as to suggest the 
startling effect of a sudden violent noise, while 
the final consonant admits of being prolonged to 
express the notion of a continued resonance. In 
this instance and in many others, the so-called 
1 imitative ' word represents an inarticulate noise 
not so much by way of an echo as symbolically. 
That is to say, the elements composing the sound 
of the word combine to produce a mental effect 
which we recognise as analogous to that produced 
by the noise. 

In much the same way, the sound of a word 
may suggest ' symbolically ' a particular kind of 
movement or a particular shape of an object. 
We often feel that a word has a peculiar natural 



IV.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 157 

fitness for expressing its meaning, though it is 
not always possible to tell why we have this 
feeling, and the reasons, when we can trace 
them, are different in different cases. Sometimes 
the notion of natural fitness is an illusion, due to 
the fact that the word obscurely reminds us of 
the sound of several other words which happen to 
have meanings somewhat similar to that which 
it expresses. But quite often the sound of a 
word has a real intrinsic significance. For 
instance, a word with long vowels, which we 
naturally utter slowly, suggests the idea of slow 
movement. A repetition of the same consonant 
suggests a repetition of movement, slow if the 
vowels be long, and rapid if the vowels be short. 
The vowels that are produced by the passage of 
the breath through a narrow opening, such as ee 
or 1, are suited to convey the notion of something 
slender or slight, while a full vowel such as 00 
suggests a massive object. A syllable ending in 
a stopped consonant, especially an unvoiced one 
like /, /, k, preceded by a short vowel, affords a 
natural expression for the idea of some quick and 
abrupt action. Sequences of consonants which 
are harsh to the ear, or involve difficult muscular 
effort in utterance, are felt to be appropriate in 
words descriptive of harsh or violent movement. 



158 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

It would be possible to say a great deal more 
about the inherent symbolism of sounds ; but it 
is not necessary here to pursue the subject in 
further detail. The point that needs to be re- 
marked is that this phonetic symbolism (which 
probably had a large share in the primary origin 
of human language) has led to a very large 
amount of root-creation in Middle and Modern 
English. It is worthy of note that many of the 
words that have in this way been invented as 
instinctive descriptions of action or form occur 
in groups of two or three, in which the consonants 
are alike, while the vowel is varied to express 
differences of mental effect. Thus we have bleb, 
blob, blub-cheeked, all denoting something inflated. 
The initial bl was perhaps suggested by the verb 
blow; the pronunciation of the syllables involves 
an inflation of the cheeks which is symbolical of 
the notion common to the three words, and the 
different degrees of fulness in the vowels are 
obviously significant of differences of size in the 
object denoted. Other instances in which the 
notion expressed by the consonantal skeleton is 
modified by difference in the vowel are jiggle, 
j°ggl e > flip* fl a Pi fl°P > chip, chap, chop ; fimble, 
f amble, fumble ; flash, flush. 

Among the many words that owe their origin 



iv.] WORD-MAKING IN ENGLISH 159 

to a sense of the intrinsic expressiveness of par- 
ticular combinations of sounds are bob, brob, 
bunch, dab, dodder, fiddle-faddle, fidge, fidget, 
flabbergast, fudge, hug, hugger-mugger, hump, jog, 
see-sazu, squander, squelch, throb, thump, thwack, 
twiddle, zvobble. Some of these, it is true, may 
in a certain sense be said to have an etymology ; 
but their actual meaning is not due to the 
word, native or foreign, that may have suggested 
their formation in the first instance, but to the 
impression which is made by their mere sound. 
Many excellent examples of intentional root- 
creation may be found among the invented words 
{net intended to be permanent additions to the 
language) in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, 
Through the Looking-glass, and The Hunting of 
the Snark. These clever coinages derive their 
effect partly from their suggestion of obscure 
reminiscences of existing words, and partly from 
real phonetic expressiveness. Two of them, 
galumphing and the verb to chortle, have come 
into pretty general use, and have found their 
way into our dictionaries. 



CHAPTER V. 

CHANGES OF MEANING. 

In our discussion of the changes which the 
English language has undergone, we have 
hitherto spoken only of those which relate to its 
grammatical structure, and those which consist 
in the addition of new words to its vocabu- 
lary. We have yet to speak of another class 
of changes, not less important, though less con- 
spicuous, than these : the changes, that is to say, 
which have taken place in the meaning of words. 
The gradual change of signification in words 
is a universal feature of human language; and 
it is not difficult to see why it is so. Even 
the richest vocabulary must, in the nature of 
things, be inadequate to represent the inexhaus- 
tible variety of possible distinctions in thought. 
We can meet the continually occurring neces- 
sities of expression only by using words in 

160 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 161 

temporary deviations from their ordinary senses. 
The dullest and most prosaic persons do this, 
of necessity and often unconsciously ; those who 
have wit and imagination do it more freely and 
more effectively. Very often these novelties of 
meaning do not survive the temporary occasion 
which gave them birth; but when a new appli- 
cation of a word happens to supply a generally 
felt want, it becomes a permanent part of the 
language, and may in its turn, by a repetition of 
the same process, give rise to other senses still 
more remote from the original meaning. Some- 
times the primary sense remains in use along 
with the senses derived from it; sometimes 
it dies out, so that the word has exchanged 
its old meaning for a number of new ones. 

It is owing to such progressive changes that 
so many of our words now bear two or more 
senses that are altogether dissimilar, and some- 
times even contradictory. If, for instance, we 
turn to an ordinary dictionary for the senses of 
the adjective fast, we find that one of them is 
'immovable/ and another is 'rapid in motion.' 
It would be obviously absurd to suppose that 
from the beginning one and the same word 
can have expressed two notions so entirely 
opposite. If we had no evidence to the contrary 

M 



162 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

we might guess that two originally distinct 
words had, in consequence of sound-change, 
come to be pronounced alike. There are many 
apparently similar cases in which this explana- 
tion would be the true one; but in the case of 
fast it is the meaning and not the sound that 
has altered, and the alteration is quite easy to 
account for. The primary sense of fast is ' firm, 
immovable.' But the notion of firmness, which 
appears in the expression 'to stand fast,' was 
developed, by an easy transition, into that of 
strength and unwavering persistence in move- 
ment. Hence it became possible to speak of 
'running fast.' The adverb in this connexion 
originally meant ' without slackening ' ; but when 
it had acquired this meaning, it was natural that 
it should pass into the modern sense 'rapidly.' 
A later development of this sense is exemplified 
when we speak of 'living too fast.' 'A fast 
liver' and 'a loose liver' are expressions practically 
equivalent, although originally, and still in other 
connexions, the two adjectives are exactly oppo- 
site in sense. 

The adjective fine affords another instance of 
a development that has issued in senses that 
appear mutually contradictory. It sometimes 
means 'slender' or 'small,' as in 'a fine 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 163 

needle,' 'fine grains/ and sometimes it means 
the very opposite. A character in a modern 
novel says : " He is not a fine child, for he 
is remarkably small; but he is a very pretty 
one." The original sense of the word is 
'highly finished.' As the result of high finish 
is often to render the object worked upon 
delicate or slender, the adjective came in cer- 
tain applications to denote these qualities, even 
when they are not the result of any process of 
elaboration. On the other hand, the notion of 
high finish naturally passed into that of beauty. 
Hence the word was used as a general expression 
of admiration ; and in cases where large growth 
is a quality to be admired it practically assumes 
the sense of ' large.' 

These curious phenomena might, perhaps, be 
paralleled in other languages ; and even in 
English it is seldom that the development of 
senses has given rise to absolutely contradictory 
meanings for the same word. But the same 
causes which, as we have seen, have produced 
an exceptionally large amount of change in 
the grammar and in the vocabulary of English, 
have had a similar effect in the department of 
signification. Although we continue to use some 
thousands of words that already existed in Old 



i6 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

English, there are comparatively few of them 
which now mean neither more nor less than 
they did a thousand years ago. When we 
compare modern English with modern German, 
we find that very often the Germans continue 
to use a word in its oldest sense, while in our 
language its meaning is something strangely 
different. We will give a few examples. 

The adjective sad had in Old English the 
sense of the corresponding German satt i satiated, 
full to repletion, having had all that one wants 
of anything. This continued to be the mean- 
ing of the word down to the fourteenth century. 
" Selden am I sad that semli for to se " 
(Seldom do I have my fill of beholding that 
fair one), says a poet of the days of Edward 
II. But a person who has satisfied his desire 
for pleasure has lost his restlessness and excita- 
bility ; he has become calm and serious, and 
more likely to attend steadily to the business 
of life. Hence in Chaucer's writings we find 
the word sad has acquired the senses of 'calm,' 
'serious,' 'trustworthy.' In Shakspere it often 
means 'serious' as opposed to trifling or merry. 
"A jest with a sad brow," "in good sadness," 
are well-known examples of this use. But 
already in Shakspere there are many instances, 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 165 

such as "your sad heart tires in a mile-a," in 
which the sense of sad has been developed 
through its use as the opposite of ' merry ' ; and in 
the seventeenth century the word became restricted 
in its present meaning of ' mournful.' The 
midland and northern dialects of English show 
a curious side-development of the meaning of 
this word. By analogy with its use in describ- 
ing persons who were serious and not easily 
moved, it has come to be applied to material 
substances in the sense of ' solid ' or ' compact.' 
In Yorkshire, 'sad bread' is bread that has not 
* risen ' properly, and is therefore not light or 
spongy, as good bread ought to be. The 
derived verb ' to sad down ' means to press 
something down, so as to make it more com- 
pact; and hence the ironmonger's trade name 
for a smoothing-iron is sad-iron. 

The original sense of glad has been preserved 
unaltered by the German equivalent glatt, which 
means 'smooth.' In Old English (as also in 
Old Norse) this meaning had already ceased to 
be current; but the word was still used for 
1 shining ' or * bright,' as applied, for instance, to 
gold, silver, jewels, and light. This was obviously 
quite a natural development from its primitive 
sense, for we make things shine by rubbing them 



1 66 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

smooth. It was equally natural that the sense 
of ' bright ' should pass into that of ' cheerful ' or 
'joyous,' as it did already in Old English. 
The word has now quite lost its old physical 
applications, and, so far as plain prose is con- 
cerned, its figurative meaning has undergone 
some narrowing. Poets and rhetorical writers 
can still speak of 'a glad spirit,' 'a glad 
landscape ' ; but in ordinary talk we express 
this notion by other words, such as joyous, 
joyful, cheerful, happy, while glad is used only to 
characterise the state of feeling pleasure for 
some specified cause. 

The German Zaun still retains its original 
sense of something that encloses, though the 
meaning is now confined to the special application 
'hedge.' In Old English tun (which is the older 
form of Zaun) meant a piece of ground enclosed by 
a fence, and specifically a farm with the buildings 
upon it. The Old English farm-houses, sur- 
rounded by the cottages of the labourers, developed 
gradually into villages, and some of these, in 
process of time, grew into still larger collections 
of habitations. Thus the word tun (in modern 
English town) has gradually changed its meaning. 
From being applied to a single farm, it came 
to denote a collection of houses (the many place- 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 167 

names ending in -ton remain as evidence of this 
stage in its history), and finally (when it had been 
superseded in its humbler applications by the 
French word village) it survived only as the 
designation of an assemblage of dwellings larger 
and more important than a village. But, as 
readers of Waverley will remember, the Scottish 
dialect has retained toun in the ancient sense as 
applied to a farm-house and its appurtenances. 

Again, we still find in modern German the 
original senses, or nearly so, of the verbs write 
and read, which in English are used only in 
senses very remote from their primitive use. 
Write is the same word as the German reiszen, 
to tear. In the early Germanic tongue it meant 
not only ' to tear,' but * to scratch ' ; and in pre- 
historic Old English it was specifically applied to 
the act of scratching ' runes ' on a piece of wood 
or stone, and afterwards it was extended to include 
the action — identical in purpose though not in 
form — of marking a piece of parchment or other 
material with signs that corresponded to spoken 
words. This use of the word became so im- 
portant that its original sense was quite forgotten, 
and does not occur at all in Old English litera- 
ture. A word was needed to describe the action 
of interpreting the meaning of written characters ; 



1 68 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

and our ancestors supplied the want by using the 
verb read (in Old English nzdan), which meant, 
like its modern German equivalent rathen, to guess 
a riddle. The noun riddle (in Old English rcedels) 
is a derivative of this word. To the early English a 
piece of writing was, we see, a mystery which only 
the wise could solve. The new sense of the word 
did not, as in the case of write, at once drive out 
the older one : indeed ' to read a riddle ' still 
occurs in literature, though it is no longer used 
in ordinary speech. The German rathen, by the 
way, means not only to guess, but to advise. In 
poetry, and in the Scottish dialect, rede still has 
this meaning, but we now regard it as a different 
word from read, and distinguish the two by an 
arbitrary variation in spelling. 

The English tide is the same word as the 
German Zeit, and in Old English it had the same 
meaning, namely 'time.' 1 But in Middle English 
its application was restricted, so that it meant 
chiefly the time of the periodical rise or fall of the 
sea ; and afterwards it was used to supply the 
want of a name for these phenomena themselves. 
As the older sense was sufficiently expressed by 
the synonym time, the word could be set free for 
its new purpose. 

1 Preserved in Christmastide, Shrovetide, Whitsuntide. 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 169 

There are many other instances in which Ger- 
man has retained the primary sense of a word, 
while English has exchanged it for one that is 
widely different. And even when the two lan- 
guages agree in using a word in its original 
meaning, it will commonly be found that in 
English it has acquired a number of additional 
senses which in German it has not. There is, it 
is true, no lack of examples of an opposite kind * ; 
indeed very few German words have lasted a 
thousand years without gaining new meanings or 
losing old ones. But it may perhaps be said that 
there has been in English a far greater abundance 
than in German of those extreme changes by 
which a word comes to express a variety of 
notions that seem to have nothing whatever in 
common ; and such changes have been hardly less 
frequent in the part of the vocabulary adopted 
from French and Latin than in that which is 
inherited from Old English. 

The changes of signification in English words 
would of themselves furnish material for a large 
volume. In one brief chapter it is impossible to 
treat the subject systematically, even in outline. 

1 For instance, the English clean and foul have their original 
Germanic senses; but in German klein has come to mean 'little' 
and faul 'idle.' 



170 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

We shall therefore attempt nothing more than to 
call attention, in a somewhat desultory manner, 
to a few out of the many causes that have been 
operative in the development of new meanings, 
and in the disappearance of meanings that were 
formerly current. Additional illustrations of the 
principles set forth may be found on almost every 
page of the Oxford English Dictionary, a work 
which attempts to trace the history of every word 
in the language from its earliest appearance. 

When we wish to express some notion for 
which we know no exact word, our easiest 
resource commonly is to use the word that 
stands for whatever other idea strikes us as 
most like that which we have in our mind. 
This process accounts for a very great pro- 
portion of the new meanings that words acquire. 
The nature of the likeness perceived or fancied 
differs in different cases. If it is a material 
thing that we wish to find a name for, the 
resemblance that helps us may be in form or 
appearance, as when we speak of the eye of a 
needle; or in some physical quality, as when 
the hard kernel of certain fruits is called a stone ; 
or in relative position, as when the top and 
bottom of a page are called the head and foot ; 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 171 

or in use or function, as when the index of a 
clock-dial is called a hand, because it serves to 
point to something. Sometimes two or more of 
these kinds of resemblance are combined : the 
ear of a pitcher is something like a human ear 
both in form and in position ; in some English 
dialects the index of a clock is called not hand 
but finger, because it resembles a finger in form 
as well as function. Thousands of English 
substantives have in this way been provided 
with new senses. The word chest in Old English, 
and until the sixteenth century, meant merely a 
box; it has since become the name for that 
part of the body which contains the lungs and 
heart. A needle, as its etymology indicates 
(compare the German ndhen, to sew), is primarily 
a tool for sewing ; but we now apply the word 
to many things, such as the magnetised bar of 
a compass, which resemble a sewing needle in 
shape. The name of horse has been given to 
various mechanical contrivances which, like the 
animal, are used to carry or support something. 
The key with which we wind up a watch is 
so called, not because it resembles in shape or 
purpose the instrument with which we lock or 
unlock a door, but because in using it we turn 
it round as we turn a key in the lock. Nearly 



172 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

all the words denoting parts of the body have, as 
our dictionaries show, acquired a host of additional 
senses, because they have been applied to things 
that were thought to resemble in one way or other 
the organs or members to which the names 
originally belonged. 

The foregoing illustrations have been confined 
to instances in which the name of one material 
thing has been transferred to another material 
thing that has been thought to resemble it. But 
the perception of resemblance, as a source of 
new signification of words, has been far more 
widely operative than these examples indicate. 
We are constantly finding that some immaterial 
object has a sort of likeness, not always clearly 
definable, to some other object, either material 
or immaterial, and so we use the name of the 
one to signify the other. Among qualities, con- 
ditions, and actions, we perceive similarities, either 
in themselves, or in their results, or in the feelings 
with which we regard them ; and the words that 
express them, whether nouns, adjectives, or verbs, 
often acquire new meanings in consequence. 
When we speak of the book of nature, the key to 
a mystery, the light of knowledge ; when we 
describe a sound, a person's manner, or the 
conditions of one's life, as rough or smooth ; when 






v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 173 

we say that time flies, that anger burns, that com- 
merce flourishes: we are using words in senses 
which we well know not to be their original senses, 
but which we feel to be justified by resemblances 
that are instinctively perceived, though many 
words might be needed to explain wherein they 
consist. In English, as in all other languages, 
this habit of metaphorical expression has played a 
large part in the development of the signification 
of words. 

It is hardly necessary to dwell on the well- 
known fact that most of the words that are 
now used to describe mental states or qualities 
have obtained these meanings through meta- 
phorical use, their earlier sense having been 
purely physical. This is, indeed, the ordinary 
course of development in all languages. But 
the history of the English language affords 
examples also of the contrary process. In Old 
English, the adjective keen could be used only 
of persons. It had the same sense as the 
German kiihn, daring, bold, though it also had the 
meaning of 'wise' or 'clever.' In the thirteenth 
century the word that expressed the attribute 
of the warrior was applied to his sword. The 
physical sense, ' sharp, cutting,' rapidly became 
prominent, and the original meaning fell out of 



174 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 



use. Although we can now speak of a 
thinker or fighter, these applications of the 
word are not inherited from Old English, but 
are metaphorical uses of the physical sense. 
The opposite of keen, as applied to a blade, is 
dull) and when we speak of 'a dull wit,' 'a 
dull brain,' we perhaps always have in our 
minds more or less the notion of a blunted 
edge. But in early Middle English dull could 
only be said of persons or their qualities. It 
is related to the Old English dot, foolish (cor- 
responding etymologically to the German toll, 
mad), and it expressed primarily want of intel- 
lect or animation. It was not until the fifteenth 
century that it could be used of the edge of 
a knife ; and the application to colour or light is 
of equally late development. 

The motive for using words in new senses is 
not always that there is any difficulty in ex- 
pressing the required meaning without such an 
expedient. It is very often merely a desire for 
freshness and vivacity of expression. Few 
people are content always to say things in the 
most obvious way : an accustomed word some- 
times seems to lose its force through familiar- 
ity, and the substitution of a picturesque or 
ludicrous metaphor enlivens the dulness of 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 175 

ordinary straightforward speech. This impulse 
accounts for the growth of what we call slang. 
The substitution of nut for ' head ' is a typical 
instance of it. In some languages a large 
number of words originally slang have displaced 
their more respectable synonyms. For example, 
in vulgar Latin testa, ' pot ' or ' shell,' was used in- 
stead of caput, ' head,' and this is the reason why 
the Italian and French words for ' head ' are testa 
and tete. Although the serious vocabulary of 
English has not been so much influenced by 
slang as that of some other tongues, there are 
some instances in which the older words ex- 
pressing certain meanings have been superseded 
by jocular perversions of the use of other words. 
In particular, there has been a curious tendency 
to grow dissatisfied with the tameness of the 
verbs denoting violent actions, such as throw- 
ing or dealing blows, and to substitute more 
emphatic synonyms. The Old English word 
for ' to throw ' was weorpan, identical with the 
German werfen. The Germans have been con- 
tent to keep the old verb in use; but in 
English it was superseded by cast (adopted 
from Old Norse), and this in its turn by 
throw (corresponding to the German drehen\ 
which properly meant to twist or wrench. In 



1 76 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

many rustic dialects throw has gone the way 
of its earlier synonyms : the usual words in 
East Derbyshire, for instance, are swat and 
hurl (pronounced oil). The notion of striking 
was expressed by the verb now pronounced 
slay, which survives only in a narrowed and 
developed meaning, and even in this meaning 
is confined to literature. Here, again, German 
has kept the old word (schlagen), while English 
has rejected it for more vigorous synonyms. 
In the Bible of 1611 the common verb in 
this sense is smite, which in Old English meant 
to smear or rub over. Its later use may be 
compared with the Elizabethan use of anoint 
for to cudgel, and perhaps with the modern 
slang wipe for a blow. But smite is now 
obsolete in ordinary language ; the regular word 
is strike, the Old English sense of which was, 
like that of the equivalent German streichen, to 
stroke, wipe, rub gently. In colloquial use strike 
itself is to a great extent superseded by hit, 
which originally meant to meet with or light 
upon, and then ' not to miss ' the mark aimed 
at. Although we still use the Old English 
beat with reference to the infliction of corporal 
chastisement, the more popular synonym is 
thrash, a lively metaphor taken from the 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 177 

language of the farm. In most provincial dia- 
lects there is an ample store of verbs for 
expressing this meaning, mostly figurative in 
their origin. 

When the resemblances that have caused a 
word to acquire several new senses happen to 
be all of the same kind, the meaning of the 
word is often widened or generalised. That is 
to say, the word obtains a sense in which it is 
descriptive of all the various things to which it 
has been applied, and of all other things that 
share their common properties. This does not 
always happen. There is no general sense of 
horse in which the word is applicable both to a 
racehorse and to a clothes-horse. In order that 
a widening of sense should occur, it is neces- 
sary that the common features of the several 
things denoted should be such as to form an 
important part of the description of each of 
them. A good instance of the process is af- 
forded by the word pipe, which originally meant 
a simple musical instrument, and afterwards 
(already in Old English) was applied to other 
things resembling this in shape. It thus became 
a general name for a hollow cylindrical body. 
We are now apt to regard this as its proper 
meaning, and to think that the shepherd's 



178 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

1 pipe ' was so called because of its tubular form. 
Sometimes the widening of the sense of a word 
is progressive. Box in early use meant a small 
receptacle (originally one made of boxwood, but 
this limitation had already been dropped in Old 
English), furnished with a lid, and intended to 
contain drugs, ointments, jewels, or money. The 
sense grew gradually wider, as the word was 
used to denote other things bearing a close 
resemblance in form and use to those which 
were previously designated by it; but down to 
the end of the seventeenth century the word 
continued to be regarded as appropriate only to 
objects of comparatively small size. After 1700 
this restriction disappeared, so that, e.g., a chest 
for holding clothes could be called a box. The 
notion corresponding to the word is now so 
general that it is equally applicable to what 
would formerly have been called a box, and to 
what would formerly have been called a chest. It 
is to be remarked that the word has many modern 
applications, which, though connected with the 
older senses by similarity, have not brought 
about any generalisation of sense. While we 
regard a pill-box, a band-box, and a box for 
clothes as objects belonging to one class, we 
have no notion of a wider class which compre- 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 179 

hends these together with a box in a stable, a 
box in a theatre, a signalman's box, and a 
shooting-box. 

Generalisation of meaning takes place in verbs 
as well as in substantives, and some of the Eng- 
lish examples are very remarkable. The verb 
bend is derived from the Germanic word which 
in English has the two forms band and bond. 
It meant originally to ' string ' a bow, to strain 
it by pulling the string, in preparation for dis- 
charging the arrow. The result of this process 
being to give curvature to the wood, to 'bend 
a bow ' was apprehended as meaning to curve 
or arch it by force; and then people spoke of 
1 bending ' other things than bows, first in the 
sense of forcing them into an arched shape, and 
afterwards in the widened sense of bringing 
them by effort out of a straight form. The 
word has some other applications which do not 
historically belong to this generalised sense, 
though some of them . are now thought of as 
derived from it. For instance, when we speak 
of ' bending one's powers to a task,' we are using 
what was originally a metaphor taken from the 
action of bending a bow. Again, the verb carry 
is an adoption of an Old French word which, 
in accordance with etymology, meant to convey 



180 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chai\ 

something in a wheeled vehicle. In English it 
was applied to signify other modes of convey- 
ance, perhaps at first by way of joke, as when 
nowadays people speak of 'carting' some object 
from one room to another. In the end, the verb 
became the most general expression for the act 
of removing a thing from one place to another 
by lifting it from the ground. In this sense it 
has to a great extent superseded the older verb 
to bear. 

While generalisation of meaning is one of the 
most common features in the history of words, 
there occur quite as many instances of the con- 
trary process, whereby a word of wide meaning 
acquires a narrower sense, in which it is applicable 
only to some of the objects which it previously 
denoted. The reason why this process of special- 
isation, as it is called, is so frequent is easy to 
explain. Even when we use a term in a very 
wide sense, we are seldom thinking of the whole 
class of things which it designates. The word 
animal, for instance, may indeed be used quite 
indeterminately, as when we are making a state- 
ment about all animals, or putting a supposed 
case in which it does not matter what species 
of animal is meant. But, far more frequently, 
we say ' this animal ' when we know that we 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 181 

might as well say ' this horse ' or ' this cow/ 
just as we often use the verb to go when we 
might as well speak more definitely of walking 
or riding. If we have to mention some living 
creature of which we do not know the name, we 
can only call it an animal, though we know that 
the idea in our minds is more definite than that 
which this word implies. Now when a word of 
wide meaning happens to be very frequently 
applied to some one out of the many classes of 
objects which come under its general definition, 
the usual consequence is that the word, when 
used in particular circumstances, suggests the 
notion only of the limited class. Perhaps the 
general sense does not go out of use; but a 
new specific sense has been developed alongside 
of it. 

The two contrary processes, of generalisation 
and specialisation, are very often illustrated in the 
history of one and the same word. We have 
seen how the word pipe, meaning originally a 
certain instrument of music, developed the general 
sense of * a thing of tubular shape.' When the 
smoking of tobacco was introduced, people said 
that the smoke was drawn through a pipe. So far 
there was no specialisation of meaning ; and if 
the English had adopted some foreign name for 



182 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the smoker's instrument there might have been no 
specialisation, though we should still call the 
thing a ' pipe ' when we were thinking particularly 
of its shape. Nor would the word have been 
specialised if it had always been convenient to 
speak of 'a tobacco-pipe' or 'a pipe for smok- 
ing ' ; but since in most cases the reference was 
clear enough without this troublesome precision, 
the simple word has acquired a specific sense, in 
which it is used quite without any mental ref- 
erence to the wider meaning. 

It is natural that the development of specific 
meanings, where the more general sense survives, 
should sometimes lead to inconvenient ambi- 
guities, and in such cases a specialised use has 
often become obsolete, being superseded by the 
more frequent employment of some term that has 
no other than the restricted meaning. To go, 
which has properly about as wide a sense as any 
verb can possibly have, had in early English also 
a limited sense. Even so late as the end of the 
seventeenth century, Bunyan writes : " I am re- 
solved to run when I can, to go when I cannot 
run, and to creep when I cannot go " ; but this 
was already somewhat old-fashioned English. 
Earlier, such expressions as ' neither to ride nor 
go ' were common. The German gehen still 






v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 183 

retains the narrower as well as the wider sense, 
but in modern English the narrower sense is 
expressed by walk. 

Some general terms have acquired many dif- 
ferent specific meanings, which do not cause 
confusion only because the circumstances in which 
they are used are different. The name of a 
material often becomes the name of several 
different articles made of the material. This 
does not always happen : there is no utensil 
commonly called a gold, a silver, or a wood) but 
a glass may mean either a drinking vessel, a 
mirror, a telescope, or a barometer, and there are 
many other different applications of the word ; 
an iron may be an instrument for smoothing 
linen, a tool for branding, a harpoon, or a kind 
of golf-club; a copper may be a copper coin, a 
mug for ale, or a large caldron (and, by trans- 
ference of application, now often one made of 
iron). It does not appear that in such cases 
there has always been an intermediate general 
sense 'thing made of the material,' for many 
specific applications are missing which on that 
supposition we should have expected to find. 
Iron does not, like the synonyms in French and 
German, mean specifically a horseshoe, nor is 
glass ordinarily used for a glass bottle. We may 



184 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

therefore regard most of the special applications 
above mentioned as having been produced by the 
omission of the denning prefix in compounds : 
thus glass in the senses above referred to is a 
shortening of drin king-glass, looking-glass, spy- 
glass, and weather-glass. 

The changes of meaning hitherto discussed 
consist for the most part in the use of a word 
to stand for something resembling that which it 
previously signified. Even the processes of 
generalisation and specialisation may be said to 
come under this head. But besides the perception 
of resemblance, there are other causes that have 
had much to do with the development of new 
senses of words. One of these lies in the fact 
that most of the objects (whether material or 
immaterial) which words denote are* complex; 
that is to say, they consist of several parts. 
When we think of any complex thing, we seldom 
have in our consciousness the idea of all its com- 
ponent parts ; when we use its name, we virtually 
mean, not the whole object, but only so much of 
it as happens to be important for our mental 
point of view at the moment. And sometimes, 
when we are thinking of a definite individual 
thing, the possible mental points of view are very 






v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 185 

numerous, so that there is a great variety of 
partial conceptions any one of which is liable to 
be substituted for the total conception of the 
object. For instance, if a man says " that book," 
pointing to a volume lying on the table, there are 
at least half a dozen different things that he may 
mean. He may say "That book weighs half a 
pound " ; and then the ' book ' that he is think- 
ing of consists of a number of sheets of paper and 
a leather or cloth cover. If he says "That book 
was unbound when I bought it," he is identifying 
the ' book ' with the sheets of paper apart from the 
binding; but if he says "That book is the 
handsomest volume I have got," he may be refer- 
ring to the binding only. If he says " I was just 
reading that book," the essential part of the 
' book ' is neither the paper nor the binding, but 
the black marks on the paper. Further, he may 
say " I had read that book before, but in another 
edition"; and then the 'book' is identified with a 
certain immaterial constituent of it, which may be 
defined as consisting of a particular series of 
words. And, lastly, if he says " I have read that 
book in several different languages," the 'book' 
means for him yet another immaterial part of the 
whole, viz. a certain product of mental labour, 
which retains its identity even when the series 



1 86 



THE MAKING OF ENGLISH 



of words in which it is embodied is totally 
changed. 

Now it would not be true to say that in these 
six examples of its use the word book has six 
different senses, in the lexicographer's acceptation 
of the term. The word denotes the same complex 
unity throughout, though the several statements 
made relate to different parts of this. But the 
illustration shows how the idea of any complex 
whole is liable on occasion to become virtually 
coincident with the idea of one or other of its 
parts ; and in this characteristic of human thought 
we have the explanation of one of the processes 
by which new senses of words are developed. 
We continually find, in studying the history of a 
language, that a word which at first denoted some 
simple object has come to mean the compound 
object of which it is a part, and that a word which 
at first stood for a compound object has come to 
stand for one of the component portions. Very 
often, a word has first acquired an inclusive sense, 
in which it means the thing which it originally 
denoted together with other things commonly 
accompanying this; and afterwards it has been 
appropriated to the accompaniments themselves. 

For example, the word board, in its specialised 
application to a table, has acquired two very 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 187 

divergent 'inclusive senses,' and each of these has 
given rise to another sense from which the original 
notion has disappeared. On the one hand, board 
was used for the table with the food upon it ; and 
hence it has come to denote the food alone, as 
when we speak of 'paying for one's board.' On 
the other hand, the word was applied to a table 
together with the persons who habitually sit 
around it to deliberate; a board of guardians of 
the poor, or a board of directors, is a number of 
persons jointly entrusted with certain deliberative 
functions. So too, in English as in many other 
languages, the word house has been taken to mean 
a building together with the persons inhabiting or 
occupying it, and hence it was successively used 
for a family consisting of parents and children, 
and for a wider unity of which a family is a part, 
consisting of persons connected by common 
descent, as when we speak of the houses of 
York and Lancaster. By a similar transference 
of meaning ' the House of Lords ' and 'the House 
of Commons ' are used for the members respec- 
tively of the upper and of the lower branch of the 
English legislature. The etymological sense of 
world 'is 'an age or generation of men.' Through 
the inclusive sense 'man and his dwelling-place,' 
the word has become capable of being applied to 



1 88 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the earth itself, and hence by generalisation of 
meaning, we can speak of ' uninhabited worlds ' in 
space, or of the ' worlds ' into which human souls 
pass after death. 

The development of new senses through 
inclusive use takes place no less frequently 
with verbs than with substantives. In Old 
English the verb wear (weriari) meant simply 
'to be clothed with,' 'to have on.' 1 But the 
action of ' wearing ' a garment, in this sense 
of the verb, will in time have the result of 
making it unfit for use. It will become thread- 
bare, or it will be rubbed into holes. Hence, 
in Middle English, the verb obtained an inclusive 
sense, in which it denoted the action together 
with its consequence. Still later, it was often 
used with reference to the consequence only; 
and this meaning was afterwards generalised, 
so as to be applied to other objects than gar- 
ments. In the Bible of 1611 we read, "The 
waters wear the stones " ; and we can now speak 
of 'a face worn by trouble.' The twofold 
meaning of the word may sometimes give rise 
to ambiguity. ' A dress that is much worn ' 
may mean either a style of dress that is fashion- 
able, or an individual garment that is the worse 

1 It also had the sense ' to clothe.' 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 189 

for wear. When the verb is used intransitively, 
it may even have quite contradictory senses. 
We may say ' I want a cloth that will wear,' 
and ' I want a cloth that will not wear,' the two 
statements meaning exactly the same thing. 

The original meaning of the verb cry is to 
utter a loud noise. But it was applied specially 
to noisy weeping ; and in modern colloquial use 
the notion of making a noise may be dropped, 
so that we can say that a person is ' crying ' 
who is shedding tears silently. 

The history of the senses of the verb drive 
exhibits more than one instance of the process 
of which we are speaking. The primary sense 
of the word is exemplified when we speak of 
driving a flock of sheep, and it is with a very 
similar notion that a coachman is said to drive 
the horses. But the coachman's action includes 
not only the urging of the horses forward, but 
also the regulating and directing of the course 
of the vehicle drawn by them. The verb has 
come to be used for the whole action, of which 
the literal ' driving ' is the least prominent part. 
When we say that a man drives a railway engine, 
we mean that he regulates the course of the 
engine, as the coachman does that of the carriage ; 
but in the literal sense of the word he 'drives' 



190 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

nothing at all. It is a still further remove from 
the original meaning when the man in charge 
of a stationary engine is said to drive it. Again, 
the person who as coachman drives a carriage 
is travelling in it himself. The verb as applied 
to him has therefore an ' inclusive meaning ' ; 
and in modern use this may sometimes drop 
what was its primary element, so that drive 
comes to mean 'to travel in a carriage drawn 
by horses,' even if somebody else holds the 
reins. Here, as in a former instance, the develop- 
ment of meanings has resulted in ambiguity. 
' He drives his own carriage ' sometimes means 
'he has a carriage of his own,' and sometimes 
'he acts as his own coachman.' 

In many cases a word has obtained a special 
shade of meaning through the accidental pro- 
minence of some particular association in which 
it frequently occurs. The verb to harbour, for 
instance, formerly meant generally 'to receive 
as a guest,' ' to give shelter to,' ' to entertain ' ; 
but, owing to its frequent occurrence in the 
proclamations which denounced penalties against 
the harbouring of criminals, it has come to be 
restricted to denote the sheltering of persons or 
things that ought not to be sheltered. In the 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 191 

figurative sense, we speak of harbouring evil 
thoughts, but not of harbouring good thoughts. 
Not long ago, an advertisement was quoted in 
the papers, in which a community of Italian 
monks appealed to English charity for sub- 
scriptions to their hospital on the ground that 
" they harbour all kinds of diseases." The 
expression was unfortunate, but in English of 
an earlier period it would have had no sinister 
meaning. The word doctor, literally 'teacher,' 
was given as a title to persons who had received 
from a University the attestation of their com- 
petence to teach some branch of learning; but, 
as the doctor of medicine was the kind of ' doc- 
tor' best known to people in general, the title 
was popularly regarded as belonging in an es- 
pecial sense to the physician. Subsequently, in 
accordance with the common tendency to extend 
downwards the range of application of honorific 
titles, it came to be applied to any practitioner 
of the healing art, whether having a University 
degree or not. 

It is similarly owing to the frequency of one 
particular association that fellow, which originally 
meant a business partner, and then generally a 
companion or comrade, has obtained the bad 
sense which it has in Pope's well-known line, 



192 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

"Worth makes the man, and want of it the 
fellow." In the fourteenth century, fellow was 
a condescending form of address (like the French 
mon ami) to a servant or other person of inferior 
station. We read in the poem of William of 
Palerne how "the Emperor called to him the 
cowherd, and courteously said, Now tell me, fel- 
low, sawest thou ever the Emperor ? " In the 
sixteenth century it was still customary to call 
a servant ' fellow ' ; and although this was no 
longer a mark of polite condescension, it did not 
imply any rudeness or bullying, as we are apt 
to imagine when we meet with it in the Eliza- 
bethan dramatists. But the frequency of this 
application rendered it unfitting to use the 
word vocatively to an equal in the sense of 
'comrade.' To say 'fellow' to one not greatly 
inferior was naturally regarded as a gross in- 
sult, and hence it is that the word is now 
used to signify a person for whom one has 
no respect. 

A very curious example of the way in which 
words originally of wide meaning have been 
restricted in their application may be seen in 
the history of the verb to stink and the related 
substantive stench. In Old English these words 
could just as appropriately be used to describe 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 193 

a delightful odour as a disagreeable one. It 
could be said that a rose stinks sweetly, or that 
a precious ointment was valued for its stench. 
When the ' five wits ' or senses are enumerated by 
Old English writers, stench is the name for the 
sense of smell. But it seems to be a fact that 
unpleasant odours make a stronger impression, 
and are more frequently remarked upon, than 
those which are pleasing; and hence in Middle 
English these words came to be applied only 
to offensive sensations. In Old High German 
the verb (stinkan) had the same breadth of 
meaning as in Old English, but in modern 
German it means just the same as in modern 
English. It is noteworthy that while we have 
a special verb to express an unpleasant odour, 
there is no verb, either in English or German, 
to express the contrary meaning. It is true 
that English has adopted from Latin the adjective 
fragrant and the substantive fragrance, but these 
are rather literary than popular words. The 
substantive scent (derived from the French sentir, 
originally ' to feel or perceive,' but also used in 
the special sense ' to smell ') is chiefly, but not 
exclusively, used in a favourable sense. The 
origin of the word smell, which has superseded 
stink and stench in their older neutral meaning, 



194 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

is obscure ; it is found, both as noun and verb, 
as early as the twelfth century. 

In some instances it has happened that one 
of the older words of the language has been 
almost entirely superseded by a synonym either 
of later growth or introduced from some foreign 
tongue, but has survived in one or two restricted 
applications. Thus the Latin spirit has taken 
the place of the native ghost in general use; 
but there are two noteworthy and very diverse 
applications in which the older word has 
remained current. One of these is the theo- 
logical use. Formularies of religious instruc- 
tion and ritual are never easily modified 
in diction, because the sentiment of reverence 
attaches itself to the traditional wording. The 
designation ' Holy Ghost ' occurred in the 
baptismal formula and in the Creed, which 
from an early date were familiar in the ver- 
nacular to every Christian. Although it is now 
permissible to speak of the 'Holy Spirit,' the 
older expression still retains the special solem- 
nity that belongs to the traditional terms of 
ritual; and at one time the substitution of 
the Latin synonym would probably have 
seemed almost irreverent. Yet it is only with 
the accompanying adjective that the word Ghost 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 195 

can be applied to the Divine Spirit. To say 
'the Ghost of God,' or 'God's Ghost/ as was 
freely done in early English, would be utterly 
shocking, because every one now feels that the 
proper sense of ghost is ' the apparition of a dead 
person.' This use of the word was, for obvious 
reasons, the one that was most deeply rooted 
in the popular consciousness. The foreign 
synonym might displace the vernacular word so 
far as it represented ideas that were familiar 
only to cultivated people; in the sense in which 
it was used every day by the multitude it was 
not so easy to supersede it. 

The history of the word lord is, on the 
whole, closely parallel to that of ghost. It is a 
contracted pronunciation of the Old English 
hldfweard 1 or hlaford, which literally translated 
is 'bread-keeper.' The word originally meant 
the head of a household in relation to the 
servants and dependents, who were called his 
' bread-eaters ' ; 2 and in Old English it had 
come to be the most general term for one 
who bears rule over others. In Middle English 

1 This full form occurs only in one passage; in the usual form 
hlaford the w was elided in haste of pronunciation, as in the 
modern pennorth for pennyworth. 

2 In Old English hldf-atan : the word hldf, bread, is the same 
as the modern loaf. 



196 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the French word master was introduced, and 
by degrees it took the place of lord in this 
wide sense. It is true that the Bible trans- 
lators of 1611 still use lord, and not master, as 
the regular correlative to servant, and in poetry 
or elevated language the word can still have 
its original meaning; but so far as the diction 
of common life is concerned, that sense has 
been obsolete for many centuries. In fact loi'd, 
like ghost, is a native word that has been 
ousted from its place by a foreign synonym ; 
but, like that word, it continues to be used in 
certain special applications, one of them being 
religious. In the Old English service-books, 
hldford was adopted as the translation of the 
Latin Dominns, as applied to God and Christ, 1 
and this use of the word had so prominent a 
place in the ordinary language of devotion 
that it could never be superseded. But besides 
its religious sense, lord had another specific 
application. A man of high rank was called 
' my lord/ not only by his own ' bread-eaters,' but 
as a customary mark of respect by his inferiors 
in station generally. As the word master more 

1 There was another word, dryhten, which was also used as 
a rendering of Dominus in this use. It survived into the fifteenth 
century as Drightin, but afterwards fell into disuse. 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 197 

and more took the place of lord in its original 
use, lord became more and more definitely 
restricted to its use as a designation of ele- 
vated station, and was employed as a prefix to 
the names or territorial appellations of barons 
and nobles of higher grades. Hence, in modern 
times, when we hear of 'a lord,' unless there 
is something in the context to indicate some 
other meaning, we always understand the refer- 
ence to be to one of those persons whose ordinary 
appellation has the prefix ' Lord ' as indicating 
his rank. In Scotland, where the Old English 
hlaford came (in accordance with the phonetic 
laws of the northern dialect) to be pronounced 
not lord but laird, the word has retained a 
meaning nearer to its original sense, being 
applied to any owner of landed property. But 
as early as the fourteenth century, the English 
form lord was in Scotland adopted in the special 
meanings that had grown up in the southern 
kingdom — viz., as a title of the Deity, and as 
the designation for a nobleman. 

Another Old English word that has undergone 
alteration of meaning through the introduction of 
a foreign synonym is feond, in modern English 
fiend. This is a substantive formed from the 
present participle of the verb fcon, to hate. In 



198 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Old English, and down to the middle of the 
fourteenth century, it was used, as the equivalent 
Feind still is in German, as the contrary of friend. 
In early Middle English the word enemy was 
adopted from French, and the native synonym 
gradually ceased to be used, except in the parti- 
cular application which was common in sermons 
and religious discourse — viz., with reference to 
the unseen enemies of the souls of men. In the 
end, the original meaning of the word was quite 
forgotten, and it became simply equivalent to 
devil. A circumstance which seems somewhat 
curious is that, although the word owes its pre- 
servation to its having belonged at one time to 
the vocabulary of religious literature and speech, 
it has ceased to belong to this special vocabulary 
at all. It is not found in the English Bible or 
in the Prayer-book, and is not at all frequent 
in sermons or other religious books. Its most 
prominent modern use is as a term of opprobrium 
for human beings whose exceeding wickedness 
suggests comparison with that of devils. 

In the history of the synonymous adjectives 
dizzy and giddy, we have another instance in 
which a foreign word has usurped the ordinary 
sense of its native equivalents, but has allowed 
them to survive in one of their less frequent 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 199 

special applications. In Old English dysig (now 
dizzy) was the usual word for ' foolish ' ; it was 
also used substantively, so that la dysega in the 
Gospels is the equivalent of " thou fool " in the 
modern version. Gydig (giddy) had the same 
sense. The etymology of these words, by the 
way, is extremely curious : the prehistoric meaning 
of both seems to have been ' possessed by a god.' x 
Gydig is a derivative of god; and dysig is from 
the Indo-Germanic root dhwes- represented in the 
Greek theos (from dhwesos), a god. However, in 
Old English the original meaning of these 
adjectives had already become obsolete, and they 
no longer denoted a ' divine madness,' but only 
commonplace want of sense. But early in the 
Middle English period the French word fol (a 
slang use of the Latin follis, a windbag) was 
introduced, and this word, in the modern iormfool, 
still continues in use. It was originally used as an 
adjective as well as a substantive, and before the 
fourteenth century it had quite superseded both the 
native synonyms in their principal sense. But 
both dysig and gydig had been occasionally used 
to describe the physical condition in which ' one's 
head swims ' ; and when the more prominent 

1 As Greek scholars will perceive, this is the etymological sense 
of enthusiastic. 



200 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

senses of the words had been driven out by their 
French synonym, this transferred application 
remained unaffected. In modern use, dizzy and 
giddy are identical in their literal meaning; but 
we can now speak figuratively of ' giddy conduct/ 
so that the word has, in a roundabout way, under- 
gone a sort of reversion to its Old English sense. 

Again, the native English stool, like the equiva- 
lent German Stuhl, originally meant any kind of 
seat for one person, and might even be applied to 
a king's throne. It acquired its present restricted 
meaning because the French word chair had been 
adopted to denote the more luxurious articles of 
furniture which were in use among the Norman 
conquerors. 

Once more, deer had in Old English the wide 
sense of the German Thier\ but in Middle 
English this meaning was expressed by the 
French word beast, and afterwards the Latin 
animal passed from scientific into popular use. 
The native word continued to have its original 
sense down to the thirteenth century ; about 
1 200 Ormin says "Lamb is soffte and stille 
deor," and still later we find the word applied to 
the lion. But even already in the thirteenth 
century it was becoming the specific name of the 
animal that was chiefly pursued in the chase. The 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 201 

older sense survived only in the expression ' small 
deer ' for rats and mice, which in Shakspere's use 
is an echo from the old poem of Sir Bevis. 
If Caxton in 148 1 once uses deer for 'beast,' 
that is only because he had lived so long at 
Bruges that he was more familiar with Flemish 
than with his native tongue. 

A very large number of English words have 
undergone a peculiar kind of change of meaning 
which consists in the addition of what has been 
called an ' emotional connotation ' to their primary 
sense. That is to say, a word that originally 
served as a mere statement of fact comes to be 
used to express the speaker's feeling with regard 
to the fact. Noteworthy instances of this process 
are the adjectives enormous, extraordinary, and 
extravagant. In their etymological sense, these 
words merely express the fact that something 
passes the ordinary or prescribed limits ; and 
in the English of former times they often occur 
in this matter-of-fact use. Thus 'an enormous 
appetite' formerly meant only what we should 
now call an abnormal appetite ; ' an extraordinary 
occurrence ' was one not in the ordinary course 
of things ; ' extravagant behaviour ' was behaviour 
which did not conform to the accepted rules of 



202 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

propriety. But if we now employ these words, 
we mean to indicate not only that what is 
referred to is unusual or abnormal, but that it 
is so in such a degree as to excite our wonder, 
indignation, or contempt. In some cases, such 
as those just mentioned, the acquisition of an 
emotional sense has been helped by something 
in the sound of the word ; the long Latin 
derivatives, especially when they contain a syllable 
that admits readily of being either drawled out, 
or pronounced with exceptional force, seem to 
be peculiarly liable to develop emotional senses. 
But the same thing has happened with many 
short words of native English origin. Great and 
large, for instance, mean to the understanding 
very much the same thing; but the former is 
an emotional word, and the latter is not. If I 
say * I found a large table in my room,' I am 
simply stating a fact ; but if I say ' I found a 
great table in my room,' I am expressing my 
surprise or annoyance. The emotional sense of 
the word has come into the language since the 
time when our villages received their names. 
To our modern apprehension it seems comical 
that a small village should be called ' Great 
Tew,' because it is larger than the neighbouring 
1 Little Tew.' If we had the villages to name 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 



203 



for the first time nowadays, we should probably 
say ' Greater ' and ' Lesser ' ; the comparative of 
great does not share the emotional quality of 
the positive. In some of their applications, little 
and small are so absolutely synonymous that 
we can use them indiscriminately ; but if any 
emotion is associated with the designation we 
must choose little. 'A small boy,' though a 
modernism, is now as good English as ' a little 
boy'; yet a foreigner who should exclaim com- 
passionately ' Poor small boy ! ' would be very 
likely to excite laughter. We talk of 'a nice 
little house,' ' a charming little picture ' ; the 
substitution of small for little in these expressions 
would be grotesque. 

Another word that has undergone this kind 
of change of meaning is grievous, which nowadays 
implies sympathy on the part of the person 
speaking, but which had certainly no such impli- 
cation in the days when offenders were sentenced 
to be ' grievously whipped.' 

When a word has acquired an emotional 
colouring foreign to its original use, it is necessary 
to provide a synonym that can be employed in 
a plain matter-of-fact way ; and if no such 
synonym happens already to exist in the lan- 
guage, it is often obtained by altering the sense 



20 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

of some current word. The history of the words 
large and small is a good example of this. In 
Old French large originally meant liberal in 
giving, or prodigal in expenditure. This sense 
came into English : ' a large man .' meant ' a 
generous man ' ; fool-large is an old word for 
' foolishly generous ' or 'extravagant.' The word 
developed in Old French the additional sense 
of * ample in dimensions,' and afterwards came 
to mean ' broad ' as opposed to long, a sense 
which remains in modern French. In the English 
of the fourteenth century we find large used in 
these ways. When great had acquired its emo- 
tional sense, and an unemotional synonym was 
needed, the want was supplied by changing the 
meaning of large. The usual opposite of large, 
in the sense of broad, was small, which originally 
meant narrow or slender, as the German schmal 
still does. When large came to be synonymous 
with great, the customary opposition of ' large 
and small ' still remained, so that small now 
means the same as little. 

Of the words used to designate unpleasant 
qualities, or to express the feelings excited by 
them, many have come to have a much stronger 
emotional meaning than that which they originally 
had. In early English foul and its derivative ^///z 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 205 

could be used (as dirt and dirty may now) with- 
out indicating any strong feeling of repulsion. In 
fact dirt was at one time a more emphatic word 
than filth. The verb to loathe was originally not 
much stronger than the modern dislike ; the cog- 
nate adjective loath or loth still expresses nothing 
more than mere reluctance. But one of the most 
prominent applications of the verb was to express 
the distaste for food felt by a sick person ; and as 
this is often attended with an actual sense of 
nausea, the verb came to denote such an intense 
repugnance as is felt for something physically 
revolting — something that 'turns one's stomach.' 
The derived adjective loathsome has shared in this 
development of meaning; in early use it was 
much less forcible than it is in modern English. 
While distaste, disrelish, dislike, have not become 
more emphatic than they were when first used, the 
originally synonymous disgust is now far stronger 
in meaning. It first appears in the French 
dictionary of Cotgrave (161 1), who renders des- 
aimer by "to fall into dislike or disgust of." 
We have already noted that stink and stench 
passed in Middle English from their original 
neutral sense to one expressive of unpleasant 
sensation ; the intensity of meaning which 
they have acquired in modern use exemplifies 



206 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the general tendency of which we are now 
speaking. 

It is worth while to remark that in some 
instances words have undergone changes of mean- 
ing because in their literary use they have been 
popularly misunderstood. In the seventeenth 
century ingenuity had still its proper meaning of 
' ingenuousness ' or candour. Locke, for instance, 
could speak of an opponent's mode of argument 
as " more creditable to his acuteness than to his 
ingenuity," which to modern ears sounds like a 
distinction without a difference. But long before 
Locke's time the adjectives ingenious and ingenuous 
had become confused in popular use ; even some 
very learned writers (or at least their printers for 
them) occasionally fell into the mistake of substi- 
tuting the one for the other. Hence the noun 
ingenuity was often ignorantly or carelessly misused 
for ' ingeniousness ' or 'ingeniosity,' and as these 
latter are both awkward words, while a noun 
answering to ingenious was more frequently wanted 
than one answering to ingenuous, the wrong sense 
ended by expelling the right one from the lan- 
guage. This is one of the many examples which 
show how powerless the regard for correctness 
becomes when it conflicts with the claims of con- 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 207 

venience of expression. Another very similar 
instance is that of the word preposterous, which 
literally means only 'placed in reversed order,' 
1 put cart before the horse.' If a letter written 
to-day is delivered before one written yesterday, 
their arrival is, in the original sense of the 
adjective, 'preposterous.' But the word must 
often have been used in contexts in which its 
exact meaning was not apparent, and so unlearned 
people imagined that it meant something like 
' outrageously absurd.' There is something in the 
sound of the word that fits it to receive an 
'emotional connotation,' and it caught the popular 
fancy as an appropriate expression for con- 
temptuous astonishment. The mistaken sense is 
now so firmly established that it would be mere 
pedantry to ignore it. Emergency is another word 
that is often used in a sense wrongly inferred 
from its contextual applications. Etymologically 
it means ' something that comes to the surface.' 
A case of emergency is a condition of things that 
comes up unexpectedly, so that it cannot be 
provided for by ordinary means. But when 
people speak of 'a case of great emergency,' it 
is evident that they apprehend the word to mean 
much the same thing as urgency, and probably 
the resemblance to the latter word has had some 



208 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

share in producing the distortion of meaning. In 
bad modern ' newspaper English ' the verb trans- 
pire is used for 'to happen or take place,' and 
this sense has even found its way into recent 
dictionaries. Literally, to transpire is ' to breathe 
through ' ; and a circumstance may correctly and 
expressively be said 'to have transpired,' in the 
sense of having become known in spite of efforts 
made to keep it secret. It is through ignorant 
misapprehension of sentences in which the word 
was thus correctly used that it has come to bear 
a perverted meaning. As this blunder, unlike 
some others of the kind, does not supply any need 
of the language, it may be hoped that the mis- 
application of the word will not be permanent. 

The current popular use of premises in the 
sense of 'a house with the outbuildings and 
the land belonging to it' is a striking example 
of the development of a new meaning through 
misunderstanding. In legal documents the word 
is used in its proper sense — ' things premised or 
stated beforehand.' Just as the premises of an 
argument are the propositions laid down at 
starting, so in a lease or a deed the premises 
are the things specified at the beginning as the 
subject to which the following stipulations have 
reference. In the body of such a document, it 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 209 

is usual to employ the expression 'the pre- 
mises ' in order to avoid the inconvenience of 
repeatedly enumerating the various objects of 
which the occupation or ownership is trans- 
ferred. As thus used, this expression is no 
more definite in meaning than 'the aforesaid' 
or ' the beforementioned ' ; but the thing to 
which it refers happens to be very frequently 
a house with its appurtenances, and hence it 
has been popularly apprehended as a name for 
this. On tavern signs we read that mine host 
is " licensed to sell ale and beer to be drunk 
on the premises " ; in police reports a vagrant 
is said to be charged with "being on certain 
premises for an unlawful purpose." In the 
announcement " This house and premises to be 
sold," the word has undergone a further 
development of meaning, which the dictionaries 
have not yet recognised. 

Sometimes, though not very often, a word 
has been so commonly employed in ironical 
language that its original meaning has been 
actually reversed. Although every Latin scholar 
knows that egregious is properly an epithet of 
praise, nobody would now feel complimented by 
being referred to as 'that egregious person.' 



210 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Similarly, the adjective sapient, literally meaning 
'wise,' can now hardly be used otherwise than 
in mockery. Here, however, the recollection of 
the proper sense of the word remains to give 
point to its contemptuous use. An instance in 
which a sense originally ironical has caused the 
favourable sense to be forgotten is afforded by 
silly (Old English s&lig), which once meant 
'blessed,' or 'happy,' like the equivalent German 
selig. In Middle English it was often used 
satirically in a tone of mock envy or admira- 
tion, and hence acquired the disparaging sense 
which it now has. 

It has been several times pointed out in this 
chapter that the senses derived from a single 
primary notion may be so diverse that it is 
only by a reference to the history of their 
development that any connexion between them 
can be discovered. This fact suggests the 
question what constitutes the identity of a word. 
Regarded purely from the point of view of 
modern English, fast meaning ' immovable ' and 
fast meaning ' rapid in motion ' are quite as 
much distinct words as light in 'a light 
weight ' and light in ' a light colour ' ; indeed, 
there is rather more similarity of sense in the 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 211 

latter pair than in the former. If, however, we 
look at the matter from the historical point of 
view, we must say that there is only one 
adjective fast, which has acquired two meanings, 
but that the spelling light represents two 
distinct adjectives, which once differed in form 
as well as in meaning, but have come to be 
pronounced alike through phonetic change. It is, 
in the abstract, quite as legitimate to take one 
point of view as the other : to say that the 
adjective fast is always the same word, or to say 
that there are two adjectives written and pro- 
nounced alike. But in practice it is more con- 
venient to decide the question of identity by the 
test of origin than by that of signification, because 
the most widely divergent senses of a word that is 
historically one are usually connected by a chain 
of intermediate meanings. 

This question, however, is of little importance 
except to lexicographers. A matter of more 
general concern is that development of meaning, 
while it has benefited the English language in 
so many obvious ways, has unfortunately added 
very largely to the number of instances in which 
the same group of sounds stands for radically 
different notions. From any point of view but 
that of the lover of puns, these ' homophones ' 



212 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

are an unmixed nuisance. Our modern un- 
phonetic spelling, bad as it is in most respects, 
has the merit of saving written English from a 
good many of the ambiguities of the spoken 
tongue. Most of the distinctions that exist in 
spelling and not in pronunciation are between 
words that are historically different, and when 
this is so the various spellings usually represent 
obsolete varieties of pronunciation. But in a few 
cases, the written language has been improved 
by the establishment of an arbitrary difference in 
spelling between what were originally senses of 
the same word. We have seen already that read 
and rede represent divergent uses of one and the 
same Old English verb ; an old-fashioned spelling 
has been retained to denote the old-fashioned 
sense, while the ordinary sense is expressed by 
a spelling in accordance with modern analogies. 
The verb travail or travel originally meant 
' to labour,' and one of its specialised applications 
was in the sense of making a toilsome journey. 
This special use became generalised afresh in 
a new direction, so that the word now means 
simply to journey, however easily or pleasantly. 
But the Bible and other old books have preserved 
for us the memory of the original sense, so that 
it still occurs as an archaism; and as in the 



v.] CHANGES OF MEANING 213 

instance of rede, we render the old-fashioned 
meaning by an old-fashioned spelling. Burrow 
and borough are probably in origin the same 
word; their senses, different as they are, have 
been developed from the Old English sense 
'stronghold.' In the sense of 'town,' which 
occurred very frequently in writing, an early 
spelling with gh became permanently fixed ; in 
the sense 'hole made by an animal,' the word 
was seldom written, so that its spelling was 
uninfluenced by tradition, and represents a later 
pronunciation. 1 

Most people will be surprised to be told that 
there is no such word as flour in Dr. Johnson's 
Dictionary of 1755, and that he gives 'the 
edible part of corn, meal ' as one of the senses 
of flower. Historically Dr. Johnson was quite 
right : the term ' flower of wheat,' which occurs 
about 1200, was only an instance of the still 
common figurative use of flower to denote 'the 
finest part ' of anything. The original spelling 
of the word was flour, which continued to be 
occasionally used in all senses down to about 
1700, though flower, introduced in the fifteenth 
century, was latterly the prevailing form. Early 
in the eighteenth century some writers began 

1 Compare thorough and furrow. 



214 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. v. 

to avail themselves of the existence of the two 
spellings as a means of distinguishing the different 
meanings. The generally current form was 
naturally retained for the sense which was most 
common in literature, and with which it was 
therefore chiefly associated ; the rarer spelling 
was left for the other use. Johnson was some- 
what behind the times in not recognising a useful 
distinction which had been for some years 
established ; but lexicography usually lags a 
little after usage. Flower and flour are now 
unquestionably two words, and in careful speech 
most people make a difference in pronunciation 
which is based on the artificial difference of 
spelling. 






CHAPTER VI. 

SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH. 

It is a truth often overlooked, but not unim- 
portant, that every addition to the resources of 
a language must in the first instance have been 
due to an act (though not necessarily a volun- 
tary or conscious act) of some one person. A 
complete history of the Making of English 
would therefore include the names of the 
Makers, and would tell us what particular 
circumstances suggested the introduction of each 
new word or grammatical form, and of each 
new sense or construction of a word. 

Of course no such complete history could 
possibly be written. We shall never know any- 
thing about the myriads of obscure persons 
who have contributed to the development of 
the English tongue. And even if it were 
possible to discover the author of every new 

215 



216 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

feature that has been introduced into the 
language since the earliest times, and the exact 
conditions under which it arose, the information 
would in all probability only very rarely have 
even the slightest interest or value. 

But there are some Makers of English of 
whose personality we do know something : 
namely, the authors of literary works that are 
still in existence. The investigation of the 
extent of their influence on the language has 
a double interest. It not only gratifies our 
natural curiosity about the origin of the mechan- 
ism of English speech, but it also contributes 
in some small degree to our knowledge of the 
mental character of the writers, and thus 
enables us to attain a more complete under- 
standing of their works. 

Now there are two ways in which an author 
may contribute to the enrichment of the 
language in which he writes. He may do so 
directly by the introduction of new words or 
new applications of words, or indirectly by the 
effect of his popularity in giving to existing 
forms of expression a wider currency and a 
new value. If a popular writer happens to 
employ some comparatively rare word in a 
striking connexion, it will very likely come into 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 217 

the common vocabulary of the multitude, and 
then undergo a development in the sense which 
would have been impossible if the word had 
continued to be confined to purely literary use. 
Moreover, when a passage of a poet or prose- 
writer becomes widely familiar as a quotation, 
the words of which it consists are apt to be 
used by later generations with a recollection of 
their particular context, and so to become 
either specialised or enriched in meaning. 

In this chapter we shall give some samples 
of what certain literary Makers of English 
have done for the language. It is compara- 
tively seldom that a word can be proved to 
have been used for the first time by a par- 
ticular author ; but it can often be shown that 
a writer has brought a word into general use, 
or that a current sense of a word is derived 
from a literary allusion. Of course it is not 
always the greatest writers whose works are in 
this indirect way most powerful in their effect 
on the language ; literary excellence counts for 
less in this matter than popularity, and the 
ability to write passages that lend themselves 
to quotation. 

It is important to point out that a great 
part of the work done by individual writers in 



2i 8 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the improvement of the language is of too 
subtle a nature to admit of being analysed or 
accurately estimated. A literary language has 
to meet requirements which do not arise in 
ordinary speech. The structure of sentences 
which suffices for the needs of oral intercourse 
is inadequate for written composition, where 
the thought to be expressed is continuous and 
complex, and where the aids to intelligibility 
furnished by intonation and gesture are wanting. 
As the art of literary composition advances, and 
the tasks to which it addresses itself become 
more ambitious, there is a constantly increasing 
need of devices for exhibiting more clearly the 
connexion of thought. The particles used for 
linking one sentence to another become more 
precise in their force, and new turns of ex- 
pression, new syntactical constructions, alien to 
the language of conversation, are continually 
being introduced. Now every one of these 
improvements in a language is an invention of 
some one person ; but it is obviously impos- 
sible, in most cases, to trace them to their 
authors. And hence it follows that, although 
we may be able to say what new words or 
meanings, or what phraseological combinations, 
are due to the influence of a particular writer, 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 219 

the effect of his works on the language may- 
be far more important than it can be proved 
to be. 

Among the works that have contributed to 
the formation of modern English an important 
place must be given to the translations of the 
Bible, from those of Tindale and Coverdale in 
the early sixteenth century to the ' Authorised 
Version' of 161 1. The effort to find accurate 
expression for the thoughts of the sacred writers 
called forth abundance of ingenuity in the 
invention of new combinations of words ; and 
the fact that the Bible has for centuries been 
the most widely read and most frequently quoted 
of books has made it the most fruitful source 
of allusive changes of meaning. The translations 
made before the invention of printing, especially 
that of Purvey in 1388, introduced many 
novelties of expression, but their circulation was 
too restricted for them to affect the general 
language as did the later versions. Besides, the 
translations from Tindale onward were not made, 
like those of earlier times, from the Vulgate, 
but from the Hebrew and Greek, or, at least, 
from Luther's German or from modern Latin 
versions directly based on the original texts. 
For rendering the expressions of the Latin Bible 






220 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

Wyclif and Purvey could avail themselves of the 
vocabulary that had been developed in English 
religious literature during the two centuries before 
they wrote. The recourse to the originals re- 
vealed new shades of meaning for which the 
traditional language of piety seemed inadequate, 
and the translators strove, often with felicitous 
success, to supply the new needs. To Coverdale 
we owe the beautiful combinations lovingkindness 
and tender mercy \ Tindale gave us long-suffering 
and peacemaker. This last is identical in etymo- 
logical meaning with the pacificus of the Vulgate ; 
but the Latin word had become current in the sense 
of 'peaceable,' so that its literal meaning was 
obscured. Wyclif and Purvey render Beati pacifici 
by ' blessid be pesible men.' But when the six- 
teenth century translator found himself confronted 
with the Greek eirenopoioi, the invention of an equi- 
valent English compound was naturally suggested. 
It will be a surprise to most people to learn 
that such a familiar and, as we should think, 
indispensable word as beautiful is not known 
to have been used by any writer before Tindale. 
He certainly did not invent it, but there is no doubt 
that by introducing it into the People's Book 
he helped to bring it into general use. Another 
innovation of Tindale' s has left a lasting mark 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 221 

on the language. By Wyclif and Purvey, the 
Latin word presbyter, designating an order of 
ministers in the Christian Church, had been 
rendered by its anglicised form priest. But in 
their translations priest stood also for another 
Latin word, sacerdos, which denoted the sacrific- 
ing ministers of the Old Testament. This was 
quite natural, because according to the view of 
the whole Christian world at the time, the priest 
or presbyter and the bishop were the successors 
in function of the sacrificing ministers of the 
Jews, and in Church Latin the word sacerdos 
was applied to both. When, however, the New 
Testament came to be translated into English 
from the Greek original, it was seen that the 
title presbuteros was the comparative of the 
adjective presbus, 'old.' Tindale retained priest 
as the translation of the Greek hiereus (the 
sacerdos of the Vulgate), but he thought that 
presbuteros ought to be translated by an English 
word of the same literal meaning. It cost him 
much thought to discover the right equivalent. 
In the first edition of his New Testament he 
used senior, a rendering which, in his controversy 
with Sir Thomas More, he admitted to be un- 
English and unsatisfactory. In his second edition 
he substituted elder, and in this he has been 



222 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

followed by all succeeding translators except 
those of the Rhemish (Roman Catholic) version. 
Thus Tindale's New Testament is the source 
of the ecclesiastical sense of elder ; and the fact 
that in the English Bible priest never occurs 
as the designation of a Christian minister has 
had a remarkable effect on the popular accepta- 
tion of the word. Although the second order 
of the Anglican clergy are officially called 
'priests,' it is only in certain northern districts 
that the people commonly apply the title to 
their parish clergyman. To the great majority 
of Englishmen the word suggests primarily either 
a Roman Catholic clergyman, or a minister of 
Jewish or heathen worship. Another noteworthy 
innovation of Tindale's is his clever rendering 
of aischrokerdes by ' greedy of filthy lucre.' The 
substantive lucre, being known to most people 
chiefly as associated with the familiar and ener- 
getic adjective, has acquired a sinister sense 
which does not belong to it etymologically, and 
from which the corresponding adjective lucrative 
has remained free. Perhaps the most admirable 
product of Tindale's talent for word-making is 
scapegoat, which, though suggested by a misin- 
terpretation of a Hebrew proper name, is a 
singularly felicitous expression of the intended 



7\ 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 223 

meaning, and in figurative use has proved a 
valuable addition to the language. 

The Bible translators after Tindale and Cover- 
dale seem to have done but little in the invention 
of words and phrases that have become part of 
the language. But the indirect effect of the 
English Bible on the English vocabulary has 
been progressive down to recent times. Many 
words that were already somewhat old-fashioned 
in 161 1, and would in the natural course of 
things soon have become obsolete, have been 
preserved from extinction because of their occur- 
rence in familiar passages of Scripture, though 
they now belong only to elevated literary diction. 
Such are apparel and raiment for ' dress ' or 
1 clothes ' ; quick for ' living ' ; damsel for ' young 
woman'; travail for 'labour.' The retention of 
firmament (the Vulgate firmamentum) in the 
first chapter of Genesis has given rise to the 
use of the word as a poetical synonym for 'sky.' 
While phrases used with conscious allusion to 
Scriptural incidents occur in all European 
languages, they are much more frequent in 
English than in the languages of Roman Catholic 
countries, where the Bible is directly familiar 
only to the learned. We can speak, without fear 
of not being understood, of • Gallio-like ' behaviour, 



224 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

'a perfect Babel' (not always with capital B), 
'a painted Jezebel,' 'a Naboth's vineyard,' 'the 
Benjamin of the family,' 'the shibboleth of a 
party,' 'Pharisee and publican,' 'the worship of 
mammon,' 'a leviathan ship.' Our dictionaries 
explain various senses of Golgotha, which are 
founded on playful references to the rendering 
attached to the word in the English Bible, 'the 
place of a skull' The appellation of 'the Prodigal 
Son ' 1 is current in allusive use elsewhere than in 
England, but only in English is there a substan- 
tive prodigal in the sense of one who has caused 
grief to his parents by abandoning his home. 

Many Bible phrases, for the most part literal 
renderings of Hebrew or Greek, have assumed 
the character of English idioms, and are often 
used with little or no consciousness of their origin. 
Such are ' to cast pearls before swine,' ' a labour 
of love,' ' a howling wilderness,' ' the shadow 
of death,' ' the eleventh hour,' ' to hope against 
hope ' (a loose version of Rom. iv. 18). Like most 
other books that have been widely popular, the 

1 This is not, strictly speaking, a Bible phrase, being derived from 
the Latin of early commentators ; but it occurs in the heading of 
Luke xv. in the English Bible. The expression ' a good Samaritan,' 
which is current also in French, is similarly of mediaeval and not of 
Biblical origin. 'To kill the fatted calf is an allusion familiar 
throughout Europe ; the wording under which it has become pro- 
verbial in English was first employed by Tindale. 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 225 

English Bible has sometimes given rise to phrases 
and uses of words through misunderstanding. 
The current application of the phrase 'to see 
eye to eye,' for 'to be of one mind,' has no 
warrant in the original context. We sometimes 
meet with the expression ' line of things ' for a 
person's special department of activity or study. 
The passage on which this is founded is : " And 
not to boast in another man's line of things 
made ready to our hand" (2 Cor. x. 16), where 
the intended meaning would have been clearer 
if commas had been inserted after the words 
'boast' and 'line.' The common saying: 'He 
that runs may read' is a misquotation of "That 
he may run that readeth it" (Hab. ii. 2), which 
has a wholly different meaning. A striking in- 
stance of word-making through misunderstanding 
is helpmeet. In the Bible of 161 1 the Hebrew 
words of Gen. ii. 18 were literally rendered "an 
help meet [i.e. fit, suitable] for him." Readers 
mistook the two words help meet for a compound ; 
and so help meet became current as a synonym 
for one's 'partner in life.' People have been 
known to suppose that it meant " one who helps 
to 'make ends meet'"; but commonly, when 
the word has been analysed at all, the second 
element has been imagined to be synonymous 



226 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

with mate, or perhaps an incorrect form of it. 
This notion suggested the formation of helpmate, 
which is a very good and correctly made com- 
pound, though it did originate in a blunder. 

It might well be expected that in any notice 
of the literary Makers of English a large place 
must be given to Chaucer. And indeed there 
can be no doubt that his writings had a powerful 
influence on the language ; but it is singularly 
difficult to prove this by definite examples. It 
would be easy to give lists of words and ex- 
pressions which are used by Chaucer, and, so 
far as we know, not by any earlier writer. We 
cannot doubt that a large proportion of these 
were really brought into literary use by him ; 
a poet with so much of new thought to express, 
and so solicitous for fulness of expression, could 
not but avail himself of the resources which his 
knowledge of foreign tongues supplied for the 
enrichment of his native language ; and he must 
often have found new and felicitous applications 
for words already current. Yet in individual 
instances we can seldom feel sure that in the 
use of this or that word he had not some English 
example before him. Further, when we see how 
much nearly all later English poets have learned 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 227 

from Chaucer, it seems certain that there must 
be a great deal of the modern poetic vocabulary 
which owes its currency to his example. But 
here, again, it is hard to find particular instances 
that are not open to doubt. Hardly any of his 
phrases — except " After the scole of Stratford- 
atte-Bowe" — can be said to have become part 
of the language in the sense in which this can 
be said of scores of phrases of the English Bible. 
For these reasons the share of Chaucer in the 
making of English must be passed over as not 
admitting of detailed illustration. 

Spenser's influence on literary English is, if not 
really greater, at least more easy to trace than that 
of the poet whom he acknowledged as his master. 
While Chaucer was content to write in the lan- 
guage of his own time, and perhaps never con- 
sciously invented a new word or used an old one 
in a new meaning, Spenser deliberately framed for 
his own use an artificial dialect, the words and 
forms of which were partly drawn from the lan- 
guage of an older time and from provincial speech, 
and partly invented by himself. Ben Jonson's 
often quoted saying that " Spenser writ no lan- 
guage " is in a certain sense quite correct. Yet 
the choice of this peculiar diction was no mere 



228 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

affectation, nor was it due to any pedantic fond- 
ness for philological curiosities. Any one who 
justly appreciates Spenser's poetry must feel that 
his language, ' pseudo-archaic ' as it may be called, 
was the only fitting vehicle for his tone of thought 
and feeling. It is true that by far the greater 
number of the words which he invented or revived 
have now become obsolete. But the literary 
vocabulary of the present day retains not a few 
traces of his influence. The familiar word bragga- 
docio is an allusion to the proper name of the vain- 
glorious knight in the Faerie Queene. The phrase 
" squire of dames " comes from the same poem, 
though probably few of those who use it have any 
suspicion of its source. The adjective blatant 
appears first in Spenser, and it is not easy to 
guess its derivation; but it is now universally 
understood. Another word that seems to have 
been invented by Spenser is elfin. Dr. Murray 
has traced the singular history of derring-do », 
which was taken from Spenser by Sir Walter 
Scott, and through his use of it has become one of 
the favourite words of modern chivalric romance. 
It originated from a passage in which Chaucer 
says that Troilus was second to no man in 
" dorring do [i.e. in daring to do] that longeth to 
a knight." The passage was paraphrased by 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 229 

Lydgate in his Troy-book, and in the early edi- 
tions of that work the word dorring was misprinted 
as derrynge. Not unnaturally, Spenser mistook 
derrynge doe for a substantive (meaning, as his 
friend E.K. says in his 'gloss' to the Shepherd's 
Calendar, "manhood and chevalrie "), and em- 
ploys it very frequently. The blunder has en- 
riched the English language with a happily 
expressive word. Another of Spenser's debts 
to Lydgate is gride, which E.K. explains by "to 
pierce." Possibly it may have arisen from a 
scribal error for girde, to smite. In imitation of 
Spenser the word has been used by many sub- 
sequent poets, who have found something in its 
sound that seemed fitted to express the passage 
of a cutting weapon through flesh and bones. 
Shelley and Tennyson have adopted it to con- 
vey the notion of harsh or grating movement. 

We now come to the greatest name in our 
literature. Unrivalled in so many other ways, 
Shakspere has no equal with regard to the extent 
and profundity of his influence on the English 
language. The greatness of this influence does 
not consist in the number of new words which he 
added to the literary vocabulary, though we have 
already had something to say of the abundance 



230 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

and felicity of the compounds which he invented, 
but in the multitude of phrases derived from his 
writings which have entered into the texture of the 
diction of literature and daily conversation. We 
might call them "household words," without re- 
membering that it is from himself that we have 
learned this expression. It would be possible to 
fill whole pages with the enumeration of the 
Shaksperian allusions which are in everyday use. 
'Caviare to the general,' 'men in buckram,' 
'coign of vantage,' 'a tower of strength,' 'full of 
sound and fury,' 'a Daniel come to judgment,' 
'yeoman service,' 'the sere and yellow leaf,' 
'hoist with his own petard,' 'to eat the leek,' 
' curled darlings,' ' to the manner born,' ' moving 
accidents,' 'a Triton among the minnows,' 'one's 
pound of flesh,' 'to wear one's heart upon one's 
sleeve,' 'Sir Oracle,' 'to gild refined gold,' 
'metal more attractive' — all these phrases, and 
hundreds of others from the same source, may 
now fairly be regarded as idioms of the English 
language. If the reader thinks that this is say- 
ing too much, let him ask himself whether any 
man could be rightly acknowledged to be 
thoroughly master of modern literary English 
who was ignorant of the customary import and 
application of these expressions. 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 231 

One Shaksperian phrase, "to out-Herod Herod," 
has not only become current in its original form, 
but has become the model after which a large 
number of other expressions have been framed. 
Among the many examples that might be quoted 
from eminent writers are "to out-Bentley Bentley," 
"to out-Milton Milton," "to out-Darwin Darwin." 
Shakspere seems in truth to have had a curious 
fondness for the invention of compound verbs with 
out-, expressing the notion of surpassing or exceed- 
ing. All the words of this kind that exist in 
modern English appear to have been either framed 
by him, or by later writers in imitation of his 
example. 

It would be easy to give a somewhat long list of 
words, such as control (as a noun), credent, dwindle, 
homekeeping, illume, lonely, orb (in the sense of 
' globe '), which were used by Shakspere, and have 
not yet been found in any earlier writer. But 
such an enumeration would probably give a 
greatly exaggerated impression of the extent of 
Shakspere's contributions to the vocabulary of 
English. The literature of his age has not been 
examined with sufficient minuteness to justify in 
any instance the assertion that a new word was 
first brought into literary use by him. Yet the 
fact that it is in his works that we so often find 



232 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the earliest known examples of words that are now 
current is at any rate instructive, as showing the 
keenness of his perception of the needs of the 
language. 

When we turn from Shakspere to Milton, we 
find striking evidence of the truth of what we 
have already remarked, that there is no constant 
relation between a writer's literary greatness, or 
even the greatness of his fame, and the extent of 
his influence on the language in which his works 
are written. For, both in the estimation of the 
multitude and in the judgment of critics, Milton's 
right to rank as second of English poets is hardly 
questioned; and yet, while Shakspere has con- 
tributed innumerable phrases to the common 
treasury of English diction, the Miltonic expres- 
sions that have really become part of the lan- 
guage are extremely few. There are, of course, 
many passages of Milton that are very familiar as 
quotations ; but there are not many of his com- 
binations of words which we commonly use, as we 
do scores of those that are found in Shakspere or 
the Bible, without a distinct consciousness of their 
origin. There are some few from Paradise Lost : 
"to hide one's diminished head," "darkness 
visible," "the human face divine," "barbaric pearl 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 233 

and gold," "that bad eminence." From // Pen- 
seroso we have " a dim religious light " ; the 
companion poem has furnished one phrase, 
"the light fantastic toe," which few who use 
it ever think of associating with the grave 
Puritan poet. " Men of light and leading " is 
Burke's adaptation (brought into popular vogue 
by Disraeli) of an expression occurring in one of 
Milton's little-read controversial pamphlets. Per- 
haps, in estimating the debt which the English 
language owes to Milton, we ought to take into 
account the abundant material which his works 
afford for effective literary allusion. " Ithuriel's 
spear," "the last infirmity of noble minds," 
"writ large," the often misquoted "fresh woods 
and pastures new," are examples of the many 
echoes of Miltonic poetry which abound in 
subsequent literature. Of new words and senses 
of words brought into literary use by Milton 
it is not possible to find any considerable 
number. Gloom, in its modern sense of 'dark- 
ness,' may probably be his invention. Scottish 
writers had used the word for ' a scowl or frown,' 
and gloomy (derived perhaps from the verb to 
gloom) had been current since the end of the 
sixteenth century. Shakspere's " gloomy woods " 
may have suggested to Milton the formation of 



234 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

the substantive, which occurs nine times in his 
poems, but is otherwise unknown before the 
eighteenth century. Pandemonium, invented by 
Milton as the proper name of the capital city of 
Hell, the general place of assembly of the devils, 
is now freely used without any allusion to its 
literary source. That Milton had a genuine 
faculty for word-making, even though he chose to 
exercise it sparingly, is sufficiently proved by his 
invention of anarch to describe Satan as the 
essential spirit of anarchy. Three later poets, 
Pope, Byron, and Shelley, have availed themselves 
of this Miltonic word, and have used it with 
striking effect. 

There are several words of Latin origin, e.g. 
horrent, impassive, irresponsible, which, so far as 
is known, occur first in Milton's works, and 
which it is possible that he may really have 
introduced. This, however, is a matter of little 
or no importance in relation to the estimation 
of the amount of Milton's share in the making 
of the language. In the middle of the seven- 
teenth century words of this kind were, to 
repeat an expression which we have already 
used, potentially English; that is to say, the 
right of forming them at will, by anglicising 
the form of Latin words or by attaching a Latin 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 235 

prefix or suffix to a word derived from that 
language, was in practice generally assumed and 
conceded. If Milton had not used these words 
some other writer of the period would almost 
certainly have done so; and they may quite 
possibly have been employed by several writers, 
without any consciousness either of innovation 
or of following a precedent. 

There are other writers, besides those we 
have mentioned, whose influence on the vocabu- 
lary and phraseology of literary English has 
been of great importance. We cannot, how- 
ever, attempt to give here any account of their 
respective contributions, because the preliminary 
investigations on which such an account must 
be based have not yet been made. Among 
the authors who deserve special attention on 
account of the effect which their works have 
had on the language — either because of their 
boldness in the introduction of new words and 
senses of words, and the extent to which their 
innovations have found acceptance, or because 
their writings have afforded abundant material 
for literary allusion — may be mentioned Lyd- 
gate. Malory, and Caxton in the fifteenth 
century ; Sir Thomas More and Lyly in the 



236 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

sixteenth century; Bacon, Philemon Holland, 
and Sir Thomas Browne in the seventeenth 
century ; and Pope and Dr. Johnson in the 
eighteenth century. Coming down to later 
times, we may mention Sir Walter Scott, 
whose writings brought into general use many 
words which he found in older authors or in 
Scottish use, such as raid, glamour, gramarye. 
The works of Carlyle present an almost unex- 
ampled abundance of new compounds and 
derivatives, largely formed in imitation of Ger- 
man ; and although comparatively few of those 
have won general acceptance, yet his influence 
has been effective in promoting a freer use of 
native English formatives than was tolerated in 
the early part of the nineteenth century. Some 
few words of his native Scottish dialect, also, 
such as outcome, have become familiar English 
from their occurrence in his writings. 

The proper names of fiction and the drama 
have not unfrequently obtained a degree of 
currency in allusive use which entitles them to 
a place in the history of the English language. 
Bunyan's 'Vanity Fair' and 'The Slough of 
Despond,' and Defoe's ' Man Friday,' are virtually 
part of the English vocabulary, though they 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 237 

may not quite come within the province of the 
lexicographer. Swift's Gullivers Travels has given 
us the words Lilliputian, Brobdingnagian, and 
Yahoo, the first of which, at any rate, is familiar 
to all educated English people. Malapropism, 
from the name of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's 
play of The Rivals, is the recognised appella- 
tion for a species of blunder which is very 
commonly met with. The names of certain 
characters in Dickens's novels have given rise 
to derivatives in general use: every one knows 
what is meant when we speak of 'Pecksniffian 
morality,' or of taking a word 'in a Pick- 
wickian sense'; and gamp, as a jocular word 
for < umbrella,' may very likely survive when 
the allusion to Mrs. Gamp has ceased to be 
generally intelligible. The proverbial use of 
the names of personages in plays has often 
remained current long after the works from 
which they are taken have been forgotten. 
Few persons have read, or even heard of, 
Rowe's Fair Penitent, Mrs. Centlivre's A Bold 
Stroke for a Wife, or Morton's Speed the 
Plough, but everybody knows the expressions 'a 
gay Lothario' and 'the real Simon Pure,' and 
< Mrs. Grundy ' is constantly referred to as the 
personification of the tyranny of social opinion. 



238 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. 

It is not unlikely that the future historian 
of the English language may find that its 
development in the nineteenth century has been 
less powerfully affected by the really great 
writers of the period than by authors of inferior 
rank, both British and American, who have 
had the knack of inventing new turns of 
expression which commended themselves to 
general imitation. There never was a time 
when a clever novelty in combination of 
words, or an ingenious perversion of the accepted 
meaning of a word, had so good a chance of 
becoming a permanent possession of the language, 
as now. In no former age was there such an 
abundance of writing of a designedly ephemeral 
character, intended merely for the amusement 
of an idle moment. The modern taste in style 
demands incessant variety of expression; the 
same thing must never, if it can be avoided, be 
denoted in consecutive sentences by the same 
word : and so those who are engaged in supplying 
the popular demand for * reading matter' eagerly 
adopt from each other their new devices for 
escaping monotony of diction. When we con- 
sider that the literature which is for all time 
is read by comparatively few, while the literature 
which is for the passing moment is read by all, 



vi.] SOME MAKERS OF ENGLISH 239 

we may easily be tempted to think that the 
future of literary English is in the hands of 
writers of defective culture and little seriousness 
of purpose, and that the language must suffer 
grave injury in the loss of its laboriously won 
capacities for precision, and in the debasement 
of words of noble import by unworthy use. 
While these apprehensions are not wholly un- 
founded, there is much to be said on the other 
side. Even the much-decried ' newspaper English ' 
has, in its better forms, some merits of its own. 
Writers whose work must be read rapidly if 
it is to be read at all have a strong motive for 
endeavouring not to be obscure; and the results 
of this endeavour may be seen in the recent 
development of many subtle contrivances of 
sentence-structure, serving to prevent the reader 
from feeling even a momentary hesitation in 
apprehending the intended construction. 1 We 
may rest assured that wherever worthy thought 
and feeling exist, they will somehow fashion for 
themselves a worthy medium of expression ; and 
unless the English-speaking peoples have entered 
on a course of intellectual decline, there is no 

1 One good instance of this is afforded by the frequency with 
which expressions like ' the fact that,' ' the circumstance that,' 
are now employed where formerly a clause would have stood 
alone as the subject of a sentence. 



240 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH [chap. vi. 

reason to fear that their language will on the 
whole suffer deterioration. In the daily increasing 
multitude of new forms of expression, even 
though it may be largely due to the unwholesome 
appetite for novelty, there must be not a little 
that will be found to answer to real needs, and 
will survive and be developed, while what is 
valueless will perish as it deserves. It is there- 
fore perhaps not an unfounded hope that the 
future history of the language will be a history 
of progress, and that our posterity will speak 
a better English — better in its greater fitness 
for the uses for which language exists — than 
the English of to-day. 



INDEX 



-able, 137 

Accusative, 45 

Adjectives, inflexions of, 5, 

49*5° 
-age, 137 
-al, 96, 98, 137 
alive, 46, 151 
alone, 151 
Ambiguities, 35, 44, 75, 76, \\ 

190 
-an, 96, 98 
ante-, prefix, 141 
and-, prefix, 140 
apolaustic, IOI 
-ation, 136 
-ative, 137 

Attributive nouns, 63 
Auxiliary verbs, 66-73 
ayenbite, 119 

Back-formation, 142 
Bacon, Francis, 236 
bant, 144 
bath, bathe, 133 
be, auxiliary, 68, 69 
be-, prefix, 134 
beautiful, 220 
bend, 179 

R 



Bible, English, 56, 72, 219-226 

borough, 213 

&w, 178 

braggadocio, 228 

brethren, 41 

Brevity, English love of, 78, 139, 

H7 
Brobdingnagian, 237 
Browne, Sir T., 236 
Browning, 122, 127 
burrow, 213 
3#j, 148 
Byron, 127, 234 

cab, 149 

Carlyle, 119, 124, 236 

carry, 178 

Caxton, 201, 235 

Celtic words in English, 82 

chair, 200 

chap, 150 

Chapman, Thomas, 127 

Chaucer, 50, 51, 55, 226 

-Chester, 81 

children, 41 

Chinese words in English, 104 

Christmas, 117 

cit, 149 



241 



242 



INDEX 



co-, prefix, 141 
Composition, 111-128 
Compound words, 65, III 
Confluent development, 22 
Coverdale, 219, 220 
cry, 189 
culprit, 153 
cycle, 147 

daisy, 1 17 

dam, 91 

Danish influence on English, 29, 

31. 83, 84 

Danish-English (in nth cen- 
tury), 31 

Dative, 45, 47 

Declension of nouns, 35-46 

" of adjectives, 9,49, 50 

deer, 200 

Derivation, in, 128-154 

derring-do, 228 

Dickens, 237 

dis-, prefix, 139 

Divergent development, 22, 24 

dizzy, 198 

do, auxiliary, 71. 

Domesday Book, 33 

drive, 189 

Dropping of sounds, 23 

dug, strong preterite, 52 

dull, 174 

dun, 82 

Durham Gospels, 37 

Dutch language, 4; words in 
English, 102 

edit, 144 
een, 41 
egregious, 209 



elder, 221 

elfin, 228 

emergency, 207 

Emotional connotation, 201 

en-, prefix, 140 

enormous, 201 

-es, plural ending, 35 

-ess, feminine ending, 58 

ex-, prefix, 141 

extra, 150 

extraordinary, 201 

extravagant, 201 

eye, 37> 4* 

face, 91 

fast, 161, 2IO 

father-in-law, 90, 1 15 

fellow, 191 

fence, 15 1 

fend, fender, 151 

fiend, 197 

filth, 204 

fine, 162 

Fine arts, terms of, 102 

firmament, 223 

flour, fiozver, 213 

_/&<?/, 199 

foul, 169, 205 

French influence on English, 33, 

58, 85-92, 136 
Future tense, 67, 72 

gamp, 237 

gaol, 87 

Gender, 5, 9, 47-50 

Generalisation of meaning, 177— 

180 
Genitive, 59, 60, 61 
gent, 149 



INDEX 



243 



German, compared with English, 

*-7» 55' 6 4, 121, 162-9 
German words in English, 103 
Germanic, Primitive, 4, 17 
ghost, 194 
giddy, 198 
glad, 165 
glass, 183, 184 
gloom, 233 
go, 182 
Golgotha, 224 
gospel, 117 

grandfather, grandmother, 90 
grandsire, grandame, 90 
great, 202 

Greek words in English, 97-101 
gride, 229 
grievous, 203 
Group-genitive, 61 
£T0z/*/, 143 

harbour, 1 90 

/&#z><?, auxiliary, 67 

>fe, as feminine pronoun, 54 

helpmate, 226 

helpmeet, 225 

/zz'j, as neuter possessive, 56 

/«V, 176 

holiday, 117 

Holland, Philemon, 236 

house, 187 

housen, 41 

hubris, 101 

husband, 1 17 

Inclusive senses, 186-190 

«»«?r, 153 

Indo-Germanic language, 18, 1 1 2 
»'»/ra <% 153 



ingenuity, 206 

inter-, prefix, 141 

Irony, a cause of changes of 

meaning, 209 
-ish, 134 

MOT, I47 

Italian words in English, 102, 103 
its, 56 

Japanese words in English, 104 
Jews' 1 -harp, 115 
Johnson, Dr., 213, 236 

keen, 173 
-kin, 138 
£z";z£, 41 
kudos, 10 1 

/ar^, 204 

Latin words in English, 81, 86, 92 

law, S3 

Law, terms of, 88 

-let, 139 

Lilliputian, 237 

-ling, 138 

/*"#/?, 203 

live, adj., 151 

/00/ftf, 205 

lord, 195 

lovingkindness, 220 

Low German language, 4 

/wen?, 222 

-iy> 135 

Lydgate, 229, 235 

Lyiy. 235 

maffick, 144 
malapropism, 237 
Malay words in English, 104 
Malory, 235 



244 



INDEX 



Meaning, changes of, 160 

mend, 151 

-ment, 137 

Middle English, meaning of the 

term, 8 
Military terms, 89 
Milton, 232-235 
miss, 149 
Misunderstanding, a cause of 

changes of meaning, 206 
Mixture of peoples, 19, 25-28 
More, Sir Thomas, 235 
Music, terms of, 102 

nem. con., 153 

nestle, 143 

Newspaper English, 208, 239 

non-, prefix, 141 

Norman Conquest, 32 

Northumbrian dialect, 37, 38 

nous, 101 

of, 44, 59 

Old English, meaning of the 
term, 8 ; dialects of, 28 ; in- 
flexions of, 9, 24, 35, 36-40, 
43 ; pronunciation of, II, 12 j 
specimen of, 11 

Old High German, 17 

ology, 147 

Onomatopoeia, 152-156 

' Ormulum,' the, 48 

-ous, 96, 98 

outbreak, 122 

outcome, 236 

oxen, 41 

oxygen, 108 

pandemonium, 234 
Parasynthetic derivatives, 120 



peacemaker, 220 

per cent, 153 

Perfect tense, 67 

Periods of the English language, 8 

phiz, 150 

Phonetic change, 20-25, u 7 

Phonetic laws, 21 

Phrasal genitive, 60 

pipe, 177, 181 

Place-names, 117 

Plattdeutsch language, 4 

Plural, endings of, 40 

Plurals, irregular, 42 

Poetry, diction of, 127 

Pope, 234, 236 

Portuguese words in English, 103 

post-, prefix, 141 

pre-, prefix, 141 

Prefixes, 139; dropped, 150 

premises, 208 

preposterous, 207 

priest, 221 

pro-, prefix, 140 

prodigal, 224 

Pronouns, 46, 54-58 

Pronunciation of Old English, 

11, 12 
pros and cons, 153 

re-, prefix, 139 
read, rede, 168, 212 
Relationship (family), terms of, 

91 

Religion, terms of, 82 

Root-creation, 154 

Russian words in English, 103 

-s, ending of plural, 35 

-' J » -•*'» genitival endings, 35 

sad, 164 



INDEX 



245 



sapient, 210 

Scandinavian languages, 4 ; 
words in English, 83, 104 

scapegoat, 222 

Science, terms of, 100, 107-109 

Scott, Sir Walter, 236 

Shakspere, 56, 126, 229 

shall, auxiliary, 57, 72 

she, 55 

shoon, 41 

Shortening, a mode of word- 
formation, 147 

silly, 210 

Simplification of Accidence, 17 

sire, 91 

size, 150 

Slang, 175 

slay, 176 

small, 204 

smell, 192 

smite, 176 

Spanish words in English, 103 

Specialisation of meaning, 180 

Spelling, 34, 212 

Spenser, 126, 127, 227 

spite, 152 

sport, 152 

stain, 151 

stench, stink, 192, 205 

stool, 200 

strike, 176 

Strong verbs, 63 

sub-, prefix, 141 

Subjunctive, 53 

Substantives, inflexion of, 35-46 

Suffixes, 133 



Swift, Jonathan, 237 
Symbolism, phonetic, 156— 159 

tend, 151 

Tennyson, 127, 147 

they, 55 

thou, 62 

thrash, 176 

throw, 175 

tide, 168 

Tindale, 56, 219 

Titles of nobility, 89 

town, 166 

Trades, designations of, 90 

Tradition, influence of, 19 

transpire, 208 

travail, travel, 212 

Turkish words in English, 103 

un-, prefix, 134 
upkeep, 124 
uptake, 124 

Verbs, conjugation of, 5, 66-73 
vie, 151 

wear, 188 

West Saxon, 37, 39 

whilom, 47 

wig, 149 

will, auxiliary, 112 

Word-stems, 112 

Wordsworth, 127 

write, 167 

Wyclif, 220 

yahoo, 237 
you, 62, 63 



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